


Renascence

by nigellecter



Series: Nigelisms [2]
Category: Charlie Countryman (2013), Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Crossover Pairings, Free Verse, Incest, M/M, Twincest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-09
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2018-11-29 23:44:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 78
Words: 41,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11451534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nigellecter/pseuds/nigellecter
Summary: Lecter twins' verse. Stretching from kid verse to where they reunite. Snippets of drabbles, headcanons, etc.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> ♗: Nigel falling asleep with his head in Hannibal's lap! (kid verse)

**Madness** is the fundamental ingredient that constitutes Nigel to inadequately mimic a such brave and fearless  _warrior_ he had remembered from one of those stories he vaguely remembers from his mama’s lips. She’d always become a **mystery** to him; quiet almost always. The gentility that lacks from their unwanted confinement as now will exude effortlessly against their eardrums before they found peace within their wiry arms; _outstretched, entangled._ How he wishes to take up such vehement and commanding **composure** and **strength** , yet another trophy has been painted, sheets after sheets. How tears had gone dry beneath his sunken gaze, adorned with another black eye that would sting like fucking hell. 

_Defeated_ , he becomes the lost soul upon their cramped bed. His gaze withdrawn from his twin, who sits by the windowsill, with a dog-eared book in his hand. He knows Hannibal might have memorized the entirety of the book by now. He knows that little imaginary world becomes Hannibal’s own safe haven; without bullies, without hurt, without absence of words and emotions. He often wonders, endlessly, what that would be like; he would rather be sucked into **a black hole** and meet the _fate_ of the buck he had once came across deep in the woods than having to be so **withdrawn** , caught in eternal silence. 

They’re the most **displaced** children out of all the _displaced_ , yet they wouldn’t appear to weep, thirsty, hungry and most of all, scared. He knows how to shoot a gaze against bigger bullies, despite being mocked for his small, slender form. How his little appendages would scream, throw down like thunderbolts. And with **every** **strike** , the world would peel off its flesh and take off a layer of his heart, piece by piece. 

He’s tired, stripped off all of his residual strength as life slowly grinds away with every forceful blink. Maybe he was that **buck** without an ounce of life, maybe he had been a **ghost** of that very warrior. Imaginary, perhaps, but he hears something murmur outside of him. It couldn’t be Hannibal, it couldn’t be him, unless he talked in his half-sleep. 

“Corky was a brave young man, an **expert swordsman** , and he dreamed of becoming the best fighter in the world.” 

The familiarity of the flesh, pressed against the contour of Hannibal’s pelvis, the potent smell of the old paper that still smells of home clings against his nostrils as his once-convulsing chest eases into a **lulling slumber.** Without the perforation of the too-bright light and persistent ache of his limbs and bruises on his face. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy headcanon, kid!Nigel.

He tries to feed his mind with all that he sees; within such **fortress** of their previous home, all the _beliefs_ and _dreams_ had been shattered as the inevitable and unpredictable future limps behind him. If he could ever define the present without finding all the **detrimental** **liabilities** , then his life in the orphanage would be half a success. Within all the distant screams and flashing lights of the sickle moonlight, he explores through the _verticality_ of the weeping trees. With all their **façades** and  **supernatural** qualities as he jumps off and flies to soar through the unending expanse of unveiled curtains. The criss-cross of Hannibal’s sketch darkening deeper and deeper with layered graphite. **Darkness** suits both of them and he was happy to call it - _them_ \- **home** , as long as the walls didn’t crash down and as long as he had the familiar reflection staring back at him with such candor. For love had to be **constituted** with _blinded eyes_ and _collapsing lungs_ , despite the deafening silence lingering between them.  

As if placed under a spell, he dares not to make any **movement** , like the time itself has warped and halted. Locked in benumbed _paralyzation_ with both astonishment from acknowledgement. Finally letting out in the open for Hannibal feels just right. With their strikingly different methods of putting **protective** layer or two, two children forced to mature too fast with the burden of _responsibility_ and the _liability_ of abruptly thrown out in the open along with less than savory individuals. The affectionate gesture of his arm wind around the lengthened hair of his twin as it coils around the broadening shoulders is intended more as putting his own mind to rest for **finality**. All the loose ends finally tied together in unbreakable links, he had seen them all; how profoundly the mankind can sink to the rock-bottom, even with broken back and bones as they had once again, escaped through the virtual walls to dead-end idle corridors. 

He could feel his eyes start to flutter, and his body sink into the dark waiting arms of sleep. The solemn silence is both reassuring and wraps him up in a layer of resentment. The  **acrimony** isn’t directed at anyone; perhaps he had been more so _frustrated_ with himself most of all. It had been long overdue for their **misconstrued** course of actions and its  _consequences_ would present itself to be the source of clearing the mishaps. A gentle breeze wafting the sound of music to his ears, except for the fact Hannibal’s steady exhalation acts more as a caressing stroke of a mother’s hand, the **milieu** matches that of the emollient. Less _severe_ , less **oppressing** with a room to breathe in. And the creaking and caterwauling of his bodies after a beatdown presented the reason for his **existence**. As much as _retaliation_ bred more bloodshed and unnecessary **consummation** that would take much of his time and effort, it would be pivotal to avenge the stretch of time they had suffered the most. Despite the mantra of their continuing bruises and pent-up anger, he’s **absent** of any distress or flaring frustration in the entangled limbs of his reflection. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nigel finding Hannibal bloodied and injured.

Disheveled, worn and complex, Nigel stands deeply rooted, _revelling_ such a beautiful mess. ****He’s standing in _contrapposto_ , wiping the ridge of the barrel with a fiber-cloth and pushing in bullets in the chambers before extending his well-muscled arm with the **shrewd innocence** , desiring even the slightest rush of his passionate touch to reverberate against the dense atmosphere. All of the intricate networks of his scars - old and new, what had bound him and made my nerves thrash like an untamed beast sings with a new concerted aria and he will be the one to contribute to the chaos, the very chaos he earned in such tragic insanity. 

For all he knows, whatever he **concocts** \- Hannibal can perceive it. It’s as quite _spectacular_ and  _hypnotic_ to explore in the midst of all things **reprehensible** , like the tales of constellations. _Gods, half-immortals, demi-gods_ , all the same **miscreants**. At the tips of his angled gaze, lies a tangled limbs strewn over, begging to be plucked off and clicked into righteous places - and at the tips of his cold-clinging hair, much tangled thoughts knock against one another, _preventing_ him from immediate action. His skeleton breaths the same **propensity** , as how he himself have embraced the catapult of _deception_ and _despair_ as his form bared all the remnants of scars, despite them having been healed a long ago. 

The urge is unstoppable, like a continuous torrent streaming out of him as his aura seem to boil over with fiery bubbles. Eyes flicker and shine as unspoken words tumble out of his sore throat wanting to be heard, begging to be understood as he yearns to taste the gurgling blood upon the man’s lips, spilling upon the ravaged spectacle, of their trenchant energy deflected off the wall where Hannibal leans. And he understands, for the other’s legs have been wobbled as he failed to make a move, despite being the man who would stand ever so patiently and calmly from all this never ending war.  

Yet, he’s writhing inside, compelled by the need to engage in a **brutal savagery.** This will be such a release from all the _logy weight_ he had experienced when he had been sinking and he has not loved something like this and triumphed, despite his lack of participation in this endeavor. A bare bass of his heart pounding could be heard when the silencer clicks onto its place, intended to end the strained melody of the man, still insolently breathing on the ground. How he loathes of its presence and he watches, with contemptible hazel, how the man’s whole being trembles from his execution as every bone break. And he withers at the sight of its imperfections, how the man’s head slants to face Hannibal’s direction in a motionless, emptiness. And how the quick staccato of the melody of his promise would heal both. 

Like a thunderous crash shattering and splitting the sky in half, his gaze drenches with crimson, even before encountering it with **animosity** of a sandstorm blasting through the wildfire in all of its invigoration. Equally _intense_ and _destructive_ , what burns him through would be extinguished. The sand battered against his form and he relents, letting himself slightly cool before sliding back into his elements before stepping over to regard his twin in absolute havoc, an arm to the other, wind around broader shoulder as a garrison, an impressible solidity against what’s undulating in all of its reddened sea. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nigel's internal reaction to Hannibal's revelation of him being the Chesapeake Ripper.

The glow of the club’s lights _infuriated_ him, as the luminescence dissolved the beauty of the  **plethora** of stars above him, barely registered beneath the musty ambience as his soul dampened with the spirit of the night sky. Bucharest had allowed for nothing but a  _monotone_ , _mediocre_ quilt, bound by threads of raindrops, condensation on the edge of his lashes. Yet tonight, the weight of that very quilt had been lifted and its weight hadn’t been grieved with his own cocktail of booze and balling cocaine - **air sinks into his lungs** with the rush of an ocean tide as fingertips clench. A brief, _imperceptible_ smirk etches, then dissipates quickly as does the onslaught of fleeting high. Hazel gems busy themselves taking in the blurred imagery beneath him. The **stunted haze** unfurls beneath the half-closed lids, crashing into his train of thought. 

The _magnificence_ of the **spectacle** becomes a permanent haunting - how the vivid imagery ensnares him in a tangled web of eternity and Hannibal’s always there like toxic in his brain, spreading his wicked chemicals to the rest of his body. Like the very metallic tang rising like an ectoplasm of his own drug and he’s _hopelessly_ and  _brokenly_ addicted to it. And he recalls the coherent thoughts solidifying into his mind as he loses himself into the **visualization** \- the rushing tide of stiff sanguine, halted in still-frame, immense amounts overlapping to drench even the presences of ripped colors and lines. The murmur of the ragged breaths becomes dried up, cracked as the poem left unsaid barrages through his chest. And it’s a painful attraction in every sense of the world. One might perceive this as a heartless kitchen nightmare of a remorseless killer, yet the threading tension of wire strung against his own goddamn heart spiral down to constrict him in twists and turns. 

For what has been broken can be remade into something beautiful once more. Yet, a painful strike of **solitude** crosses his heart, _as if he had been the one longing to be understood_. Such silence roars so loud against the back of his skull as he **masticates** the words over. Hannibal Lecter remains to be recklessly dangerous, extraordinarily cunning and instead of being perplexed by the startling revelation that would push anyone out of their comfort zone, it barely rattles his own countenance. Except, there’s an idea of truly belonging with the crest of **understanding**. Along with **doleful ache**. He finds a bitter sort of comfort in _silence_ , **in rage** , in transgression, in treachery. 

Like him, those ravaged beneath Hannibal’s pained wrath are the fortunate ones. Others crash land in the sea, **shattered** even before sinking to the depths of the sea if the initial impact of the collision hadn’t killed them instantaneously. Others hit the pavement (like he had), to **collide** with the mountains of gravity and broken bones would’ve acted like shatter glass and fracture snippets of sky, painting the golden sky crimson. The most fucking worst way would be to let you live, holding you as an inescapable prisoner, **immobile** ,  **incapacitated** and **helpless**.

Life is the **lesson** and growth is at least somewhat on the radar - and through the height of occurrence in _retrospect_ , coming and going as neutral waves in a vast ocean of starless black and his cheek presses against the cold surface of the desk - and he _drifts_ and _affixes_ himself to myriads of emotions, the very definition of liminal punctuality - as the sky sings and tumbles down numerous times, letting the rain splinter his face like pieces of shrapnel eager to tear through his cheek as he descend down with skinned back and bloody rivulets, screaming _her_ name through the splitting seconds before a will to malice flees above  _dessent_. Inhales feel like polluted water, not air, as it enters his lungs. 

Heart bursting and throbbing to beat, except he was **already dead** and his blood had long turned into specks of rust. And he’s weighed down, as though a wave of mud had entered him. Stalled, unbelievably heavy.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Drabble request: Hannibal showing up to his door shaken and kind of beat up from an attempted murder that went wrong

Irritation flares, much _fervent_ and _zealous_ than the bathing sun over the intense horizon stretched before him as birds chirp, the honking noises of before finally subsides, along with a commotion of people involved in the said incident. The conflict feels like a jagged knife entering his body, just below the solar plexus as it lodges there. How terrible it is to live with the feeling of a shattered mind; where his corporeality becomes a kind of _plateau_ of **invisible hurt** , as ghostly things emerge from around him, only to inflict further pain. The torpor weighs him down, an anchor shackled around his feet as he barely remains attentive to the rhythmic knock on the door. It should be open, he had heard Hannibal make his _surreptitious_ exit around 3am. He had been just getting tipsy enough, to let the world reduce like a ghostland, yet still aware and conscious of everything which had occurred. 

Now, he struggles to reach out and touch something concrete with all of his being and he takes a hold of a liquid image and they scream in pain. So much **violence** and **pain**. The image like this would never dissipate. Is this real? Did it really partake in the vicinity of his sector, his goddamn district? His half-lidded gaze of before smolders with **vitriol fervor** , as his fingers are quick to clutch upon his twin’s sagging shoulder. **Herculean** pain etches everywhere and he could feel the furnace bubbling and boiling beneath the jagged edges of the custom-tailored suit. His falcon gaze hones, _studious_ , slowly trailing every mottled bruise and numerous cuts over Hannibal’s form; gravelled concrete against the convex of cheekbones, the contouring rivulets of crimson still fresh and flowing, the _gentle tremor_ of abdomen - a telltale sign of the stab-wound. 

The stubborn threads of alcohol wicks away in the air as wounds remain _septic_ , just to be torn at the seams once again. His long-healed gash **aches** , **contorts** and **clutches** as if his own fingers had turned into talons, ripping into his musculature, all the way down to gleaming slatted bones, to squeeze his rapid heart. All the _cadence_ , **palpitations** echoing up to the crown of his head as the booming strident sensation intensifies and he’s slamming the door shut after them. Not waiting for Hannibal to clarify the fuck-up, he clears his throat, as if broken glasses had been lodged against his windpipe. “Get undressed and go to the bathroom, I’ll join you shortly after.” 

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lecter Twins headcanon || Nigel's flee from the orphanage.

The room is full of EMS personnel moving incessantly about and he lays relatively _bare_ on the gurney, his _shaggy_ , **weathered** clothes stripped away for the access of his body. IV attempts dot his body, along with the distinctive beveled edge from his own attempts to get high as a fucking kite. Except the mercury threading weighing his atrophied strands of muscles down, along with the specks of plastered and rusted crimson drawing _unnoticeable_ stream contouring down the eternal pout of his upper lip, the squeeze of streamed _chronology_ upon the past few days render weak. But he finds himself still fighting - like his hand becoming a  **vice** around his conscious as knuckle whitens upon the bar - towards the **bitter end**. 

A blood pressure cuff strangles his slender arm, above where the intricate network full of  **perforations** and **bruises**  line and more tubes snake from his chest, lulled quiet beneath the star-studded night. He doesn’t fight the swelling tears streaming beneath the greased mane of his jet dark brown and beneath the sunken sculpted features with sharpened blades and razors, the **eternal memory** of his determined escape replays; how his rough, calloused tips, already hardened through opening and reopening of his flesh recalls of the disconnect - from the relative warmth of beaten, dog-eared mattress down to the the frigid icicles of the unpleasant hardness of the floor. He’d rather plummet down the depth of the chasmic oblivion against the solidity beneath him, yet an unknown arm helps to lift him up to his feet and he staggers - his head droops and he’s empty. He’d consumed three years of his shortest, longest years. 

Blaring alarm within his cranium awakens him from the shallow sleep, full of _blurred_ and  _smeared_ strokes with soft lull of breaths floating into his ear. Perturbed by the lingering **aggrevated gape** of his torn flesh and the desolate darkness intensifies through the spikes of the lashing rustle of air, _shrilling_ with the most **haunting aria** orchestrated by the whirlpool of frigid snowstorm. The blanketed silence of the night becomes more agonizing steps towards the twisted idea of love, life, feelings and just basic human emotions. How he had turned into a resentful, pessimistic and self-deprecating being with a hot, white, blinding gaze of continuity.  

And he’s aware of the vehement verticality of unforgiving mock and ruinous repetition of the landscape and his elven alabaster form and intimidating _perception_ of reality through muddied umber and perturbed prick and thorns of the crushing elements. He had been so blind, making it impossible not to hear and believe every syllable spoken with candor **genuity** \- through the spilling maroon, darkened **concentration** of emotion only he could perceive as they had planted the seeds. And that would grow to lead to his **demise** \- for Hannibal had been all he could completely _see_ and vice versa. 

For now, his crushed heart feels worthless and the ambience maintains the strict silence, which had been bombarding him with agglomerating tidal wave since his  **sudden departure** \- he would’ve said he needed to move on with his life out of this destitute prison of mind and body and not feel like a victim any more. His dopplëganger would say otherwise, for all memories are _subjective_ and they would find so many things **transposed** or re-remembered  **out of sequence**. He had been the one _hiding_ , maintained a hint of **treachery** through such  _misconstrued perception_ and he would **unequivocally** condemn, yet be an fervor  **addict** to any violence pertaining to the grief. Such intrusion of chemical had been necessary to relive and watch it **expurgate**.  


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hannibal wanted to eat all of Nigel if he got a chance. This is Nigel's response to that.

He had spent a copious amount of time _scrutinizing_ the fine architecture of his body, an  _accumulation_ of **archives** ; frayed pages and a few handful of them ripped and burned beyond recognition, a living, ever growing **collection** of self that _reality_ would eat away at them. Culminations of fumbling and stumbling, his valiant **resistance** along with unknown depth of new beginnings had been strewn across the time-tested pages. Both a bustling  _cacophony_ and unperturbed _solace_ filled with veiled darkness stretching out in an unfathomable galaxy. 

There would be no need to _cleanse_ of the stained ink that mars every minute crease of his rough hands ― an epitome of **paradox** ; hands that caressed and fed the words upon his brother’s mind palace as if he had washed away his own beautiful glimpse into _insanity_ and _askewance_. The same which evolved to trail every word on someone else’s body, as he would leave no **remnants** of his own self as he tore through every wretched aspect of their lives, with _stained_ , _blotched_ and _smeared_ memories. 

And those had already lost their _integrity_ and _poignancy_ , up until their unexpected reunion brought those beyond the confines of his unconscious. Had his body already be bound within unfading carapace, as he familiarized himself with the rage born of **vengeance** and **virulence**  ― all memories of past self returned with his reflection gazing into him with such _amplified_ desire. 

A bloodbath. 

No more of the **moral restraints** , cast aside as if they had been an addendum to their unexplainable, complicated, **cornucopia** of relationship. A mere passing thought as all of his expressions would be concealed beneath his withdrawn masquerade ― though he isn’t without a sliver of heart like his reflection. And he finds himself breaking away from those invisible bars. 

Contrasting rush ― of **treacherousness** as coagulated blood refuses to flow and yet again, rekindled fire brews such a maelstrom within him that they rush forth from his glowering hazel as he takes **an omen of death** into consideration. It would be a _sempiternal_ prison he would come to **accept** , with a bated heart. 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My answer to the question, "What do you do when you can't sleep?"  
> Young Lecter Siblings.

When the bouts of insomnia struck him hard, nothing could make him slip away towards the realm of unfurling subconsciousness. It wasn’t just a simple fear of coming across Mischa’s ravaged remains or letting her star-shaped fingers unclench away from his own fragile fingers. Hannibal hadn’t been entirely free from hearing such phantasmic, sharp screams of their sister shouting for their names either. The day remains to be incomparably wretched, as he recalls their helpless figures, mingled and sitting on the wooden floor with such grim faces, clutching each other for ephemeral comfort. Didn’t Mischa shape their existence upon the world as superpredators, putting the spotlight upon them as sanguine blood accompanied no matter what they did?

The pattering rain had turned into a full-bloomed snowstorm as the snowdrift piles up on the ledge of his own bedroom. Hannibal had requested him that he needed own time to cope as he remained a recluse behind the closed door of his study and Nigel could still feel Mischa’s breath against the back of his neck (as if she had still been alive). So softly as the scent of wet earth permeated upon the cracks of the windows. An empty ribcage breathing with unspoken words compressed upon the chambers of his hearts, as he fills it with both requiem and aria. He loves and hates this particular heaviness of his feels, as his figure aches and glows beneath the sliver of silver moonlight.

“I think of her scents, plump peach face, white skirts that always grazed the earth like her little hands had been, and how that absence of her strikes such a fucking dent in both my brain and heart.” Such wisps of moments coalesce, then unfurl within the recess of his mind. Memories of his youth cuts him, heals him whole again. How he wishes to have her back, as his imagined millions of times. All grown up, strikingly beautiful, with the same Lecter intuition and empathy. “I would usually drink until my brain fucking shuts off for its own good or let the scenery unfold and do the talking.”

No, he would not run, nor try to sever this memory, as natural and innate it gets. Such deep-seated chapter in his book, continues to edit and condense to be such cathartic memory.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugnies ir Ledo || The Lecter Siblings  
> *Fire and Ice in Lithuanian

When death had purpose and set its mind upon his imminent victims, it didn’t need any ominous clouds that stalked the expanse of the Lecter Castle nor black and glistening sleet that would turn into solid ice as rain lashed against the time-tested walls. It also didn’t need the force of the storm brewing and such seraphic and calming feathery clouds drifted in the sky to be pushed off as tumultuousness pushed through. Their parents were already left immobile, the paralyzation of their limbs evident as every sensation and stilled **petrification** brought the inevitable result. Yet, the cloying sweetness offset the calamitous effect of the **avalanche**. Through the constant pain in his chest along with the aggravating numbness that tingled with a chain reaction of torpedo cutting through the depths of the things that continued to rattle, Nigel watches with a hint of unfurled **impervious** tranquility that would strangely become undeniably unreal.

Nigel is such an embodiment of **inextinguishable** fire; it’s so violently alive and it’s literally eating away at him. His flesh, his sanity, his vivid recollections of fleeting contentment; of their mom’s rustic, rich and succulent cooking to their father’s classy, yet rough pastime of hunting in the wintry wonderland. He didn’t fancy particularly of watching the viscera spill upon the unperturbed snow as Hannibal had been, yet he could revel in the grandeur of the view from the biggest and tallest tree he could imagine at sixteen as he breathes air like how he’s supposed to do. Now he’s merely excreting the waste as ash and emits carbon and cinders as he **disintegrates**. His spilling emotions become the multitudes of thousands of voices, his own voices piling up on top of each other as they become a continuous cry.

A requiem upon his wrecked sorrow as the melody soars up to a peak, only to swing down again like a pendulum. Now, his low, grieving murmur of his voice is barely audible upon his fluttering chest and scalding tears of lava contouring through his red, defined cheeks. Through his strong jaw, the hotness aggravates further with the chill seeping through the ground. The swollen lids throb with yearning **nostalgia** , a pang becoming much more ravenous as his finger clutches what seems to be still warm rumpled sheets, still baring their presence as if they had parted the mold for only a few minutes.

Mischa could still feel their existence through the warmth of the candle stub perched above the extinguished fireplace. The frigid chill creeps into the castle like death once had been and it’ll be the permanent fixture upon the ragged walls of the living room. She looks into the heart of the newly lit flame as itstranslucent edges flicker in constant motion, the shadows behind it growing bigger as the rich orange slants onto the **hearth**. Supposedly it burns the smell of death, still permeated within the air.

Attempting to drive it away for good as lament sinks deep inside of her, she gazes into the tiny blue-tinged core that surrounds the wick and recalls her trembling heart in return. As it begins to ache her. Upon hearing Nigel’s muffled cry upon the rug and cold-seeped floor, she straightens up and thinks about her brothers; such contradictory beings. One’s now spilling **self-destructive** emotions like a wildfire ravaging through the woods as she could feel him wither away. Hannibal’s stoicism hinders her from penetrating through the eldest sibling, yet she knows, he would break later with a much greater force as he would slowly crumble down into stardust. Dessicated and barren as jagged formations of snow crystals.

Right now, she’s more attracted to the ember as her round eyes search for Nigel; she lowers herself, wipes a mass of unruly, messed up blonde away from Nigel’s damp forehead as her own plasters to her temple and the back of her neck. She could literally feel the etched zigzag of Nigel’s salty moisture and she feels an irresistible urge to rinse his stifling hotness with her softened brightness. Maybe then, the fizzle within him wouldn’t die away too soon as he had been going through dropping and breaking - he falls and can’t get himself back up. Maybe he would see the truth when he’s ready.

~~

Hannibal hadn’t even dared to visit their parents’ grave just yet - it had been two weeks since they perished upon the Earth and the difficult life persisted. As an eldest sibling, he had felt a staggering **responsibility** upon his shoulders and he had still maintained his impassive facade until now. There wasn’t any of his confident bravado, nothing technically difficult as he had been always an **astute** young man, capable of outdoing many even at such tender age. Yet, time seems to be not on his side as it won’t heal all of his wounds, but more than that, it was the progress of learning how to forgive when they shouldn’t be forgiven was what gnaws his own inside. If Nigel had his innate fire, his was surrounded by dense miasmic fog, whirling snowdrift ruthlessly howling an electric current that would reduce anything **inanimate**. Wasn’t willpower born out of natural ability, as his own strengthened through discipline?

The untouched **steadiness** of his form seems to be even more so unique as he had accustomed to solitude. Yet, he could feel the immeasurable cacophony rattle against his ribcage as moments like this had never failed to sink his heart. A **forlornness** paints beneath a mask of composure and melancholy makes him to descend further into silence. Nigel and Mischa’s voices ring like **apparitions** outside his view and he watches several diffusing shrouding going off at the same time as if his parents were wrapped for burial once again; no, he didn’t need sheets dappled with dark bloodstains to blankly stare at the bereaved, as the candlelight rippling motion becomes that of colossal waves upon his beating heart. There’s no light, only the darkness after the wick drowns in the puddle of wax, the individual whirl of rising smoke meld and blur into thick streaks, coalescing with his own quiet breath and it pours down with **ferocious** speed. As if his own viscera had been ravaged open.

Hannibal stares blankly as the rain of tears become his own **memorial service** , for the souls of the departed.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lecter Twins || The Memories Will Find You and Make You Mine

I would go to the ends for you,  
no matter how often we stand on the opposite ends of the precipice,  
beholding the worst fear,  
as we look through the **mirroring reflections** of the selves.

As the enigmatic umber, trapped in infinite prison of obsolete fear,  
It’s not a _fear_ of spilling the shared past,  
but an **extension** of facade of divided halves  
with no borders, separation, hate and judgment.

His unspoken voice, a stream  
muttering a mantra of trembling war-song,  
roaring further on as they will never be the same  
bruised, beaten and used, but never **broken** beneath the raging storm

All through hurtling exchanges of prickling needles,  
scalding crimson trails and tearing piercing cries  
putting a halt on the castle in the air.

Foams wash over like angry fists as pulsing flutter  
beeline from steady to hyperventilating  
even more so potent than the despoliation of wear

you are both the unbreakable link and keepsake of all things precious   
in the mist of tears and widening cracks in my _quintessence_ ,  
only to be mended through a solemn recovery of  
gleaming black opal-like blood gushing in a blink of an eye.

Lives full of blood and thunder finally abate  
to that of an evanescent _serenity_ ,  
calm before the booming claps of lightning.

Sometimes quietude is violent  
As ebb and flow manifests into a gale  
An atavistic **concatenation** transforms to fornication  
Bereft of faint breezes and whiffs of graphite dusts and luminescence.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kid!verse. Escaping from the orphanage.

With bated and held breath, his own hues run over the _contours_ of his body; protruding collarbone peeking beneath the **malnourished** , **wiry** form of his and how his entire form glistens with a bit of moisture and faint moonglow, all the way down to the slight dip and jutting hipbones over the flat planes of his _abdominal muscle_ beneath his too-shortened hem of the tattered t-shirt. Not because of guilt nor regret, it exhilarates him to break into the progressing thoughts on interpersonal conquest they’re **both** going to take.

Clarity bombards into him like a freight train and he feels the hint of betrayal, despite Hannibal being so mellowed in his **aching conversation**. How the minutest spark of percussion would rattle and transfer through his limbs. Through all the deeply-crested valleys of him. And supposedly, that’s Hannibal’s sky clapping, the oceans rising _tumultuously_ as eyes ablaze. How he could cocoon against his twin’s flesh, blankets seeping as they would of blood. It’s both enthralling and terrifying. To know Hannibal’s **capability** of emotive responses, much  **starker** than his own in this moment, it seems. 

He **retains** and he **indulges** all the memories; in both awakeness and sleep. He fills his lungs with them as the red continues to tickle, caress around his and his twin’s being as the moon slumps, the wolf howls and the field and the valleys relent in his dream - _without_ the numerous sounds of slumbering children, _without_ the desolate, mountainous walls of their former home. 

A touch **advances** , towards the curve of Hannibal’s jaw and neck. He feels the _tension_ , he feels the _prodding gaze_ of the other; may he sit on the **cliff’s edge** and gaze in _wonder_ , as his softened palm contours against his twin’s shoulder. “I was painting the pathway of our escape. Remember the _narrow passageway_ our papa showed us? I found another hidden one that leads to the woods where we used to play.” How his hazel glimmers with wonderous mischievous spark. How the air fills into his little lungs as he breathes words in murmur. 

If all the **ruminations** had unfolded with a road map of their incomplete life and all the places, it would take him and lead his way back to his brother. Universe could come and whisk them away, bring them to the galaxy where nobody would know their name and what that entitles. Their eyes of the shining stars and sorrowed afflictions, gliding to the deepest place inside their respective _black holes_. _Would they stop the time and let them float in the comfy smoky waves, burn him with the remnants of his fire that sparkles from afar?_

How he exhales **toxicity** of the atmosphere and inhales **positivity**. Yet, his pride is kept low beneath the glistening smolder of his fire. _Expectations_ such as this would NOT lead into disappointments, all the while decisions such as this would lead to consequences. He’s prepared to get hurt for uncertainty, for love knows no limits, but it must be given fairly. **Optimism** isn’t cherished amidst such destructive force of the walls that tremor before him. Even in the midst of their silence as his spoken words remain afloat. _If they could be manifested as a confetti or a jagged icicles upon their young, painted bodies?_ It remains to be seen. The positivism continues to **encroach** upon his cranium as his fervid heart builds a Tower of Babel. 

He must tread with caution and gentility. He refuses to witness more red like fire, of their shed blood. He’d trudge upon the battlefield and victoriously emerge, seeing their life as something powerful and never dying. And Hannibal’s eyes remain DANGEROUS, yet they aren’t of aversion nor unacceptance. He isn’t betrayed by his own mind, for this heart that remains confined and shackled no longer beats, but would **shatter** with further _suppression_. 

**Uncertainty** breeds and his twin’s mirror doesn’t remain in obscurity as it often does with multitudes of other washed out emotions. He’d gladly accept a fresh wound that isn’t a whiplash or a mottled bruise after bruises as colors seep in, as it uncovers his truest spirit, without a delicate and fragile vessel. With **eclipsing** time, the gold light of their days would eventually overwhelm their frigid confinement. “I will reach for our  **thunderous** light, no matter what we have to bid; a dizzied farewell as how untrue the house have become to us. A doomed tempest, a fucking doom.” A hitched breath, as fingers tremor as they curl. “WE are going to escape, _tomorrow night_ , precisely half an hour after all the fucking lights turn off.” 


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nigel cracks Hannibal's head against a wall (the story will continue and I will upload my replies here).

The center of his chest ticks. He has a **heart** and he doesn’t have to prod behind the adamantine confines for it to be detonated, pulverized. Some don’t see it as they should, or worse yet, some do and take advantage of its _fragileness_. One must accept everything patiently and fearlessly, yet he lacks the former and there’s only one thing certain, he’s **condemned** to LIFE, not DEATH, yet his own inadequacy implies _withdrawal_ , _mistrust_ and therewith the beginning of a **false path**. 

The moment their eyes meet, such fervorous anger forms beneath his vitriol hazel.  ****The world blurs, as his form _accompanies_ the folds of COLD WIND; wickedly engulfing the **manifestation** of his form, matching the non-solitary night. Yet perturbed, as if treading over the storm’s edge as as the warming hearth where the thickness of the heat intensifies, both to suffocate him and chase away the cold shadows from his bones. The first caution for him to follow would be to abstain from drinking alcohol, yet he’d rather smolder in the fire with live ASHES in a futile attempt to ease the pain. In an attempt to **forget**.

The velocity of his definitive motions burns him as he bleeds out, his claws wanting to tear the marrow from Hannibal’s bones like he was nothing more than a sack of stuffing. They’re always over the opposite end, without trying to ever search for balance; somewhere in acceptance of both, strength in both, vision of both, the perfect in-out-sight as Hannibal’s head smacks, smacks, SMACKS with **accountability**. Vomiting out his thoughts that flitted through his own rattled brain, left with the repercussions of such reckless abandon with the cracked reflection. Dependability was never really his strong suit and his heartbeat is beating hard out of despair as fate is torn between them, tearing them apart in a **quantifiable** recurrence of DYSPHORIA. 

No longer his body would discharge pain _spontaneously_ , as he would with **suffering**. Because it’s his mind’s mysterious _instinct_ to believe the pain is good, or that it cannot be escaped. Enough emptiness is inside him to move the sky into tearing itself in half and once upon a time ago, enough love would mend the **inevitability** , yet his heart is in PIECES, despite its formidable survivability. And he’d sink and plummet all the same, despite the tenaciousness, despite the refusal to do so. 


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Headcanon Drabble || the edge of the forest, kid!Nigel, twins

The hands that caress him should move worlds _beyond_  what his own **strength** entitles. In the darkness, they should alight the gaps between his tense spine and build rivers between all his  _cracks_ and _crevices_. They should hold the map of every feature gone unnoticed, by covetous eyes and trace along the edge of chipped fragments. He’s nothing like a **perfected masterpiece** , nor he wishes to revel in awe in crafting his very own _existence_ , for pain washes over his skin like a layer of warm saltwater upon the dotting spill of **moonlight** over the windows. How it paints him like _watercolors_ , as continuous as his own voice lulls. It becomes the symbol of how it fills his moods with _passion_ and _color_ ; of **renewed energy.** It’s as if Hannibal drapes a blanket of warm silk around his shoulders, each thread another _unspoken lyric_ that would spill over his beaten and weary face. 

Never would he let it _stir_ and _adulterate_ his own poetry, as he’d be taken to the **edge of the forest** - _his favorite place_ \- to fill the cracks of his skin with something soothing and honey-sweet. The **kaleidoscope** of the landscape undrapes before him and his heart thuds. His lips are already raw, chapped and chewed upon. Like a lotus in a muddied pond, his inflicted wounds are _caressed_. Yet, all the touch serves like the tip of the blade, swift as the stroke of a knife as a **sorrowful judgment** impacts with a tear, yet never in a distraught anguish. Its work is him, _incarnate_ , painted with struggles, but they don’t particularly become himself. The cruelty remains, yet his heart never breaks, albeit its existence in his life is now permanent. 

He still holds onto the hope, that all the fucking bullies will learn either from his **reciprocated** blade or from his tears, or both. Lightning strikes through numerous _streaks_ , all the way through his heart. Everything Hannibal manifests is **paralyzing** ; every little friction between them becoming sparks flying. They could brew up a storm if they wanted to, for his is not to give or to be sacrificed upon. **Their forever sacred ground** , with his soul still filled with sweet hopes and happiness; yet they melt upon the torrid misfortune, the rapidity of reality’s grasp, like barbed wires upon Nigel’s already ravaged hands and calves. 


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hannibal wanted Nigel to dominate him (in a sexual manner) and this is the sin I write.

Both  **madness**  and sense of  **limerence**  had completely bewitched him, yet Hannibal doesn’t have such a recollection when threading consciousness finally  _emerges_ , albeit briefly. It thrives on his comfort and his restrained shaking is  **trivial**. Until his own flesh is splayed in half as his body begins to  _malfunction_ ; letting his weakness leech his energy, _ever so willingly_ , as he aches and arches within the voice that had been silenced ephemerally by stretching time and lack of separation. It’s all the same and filled with  **recurrent imagery**  of brittle bones, ravaged flesh and loathsome putridity. His galaxy and soul they can’t touch. The place he will never reach.

Yet, his strong arms find their strength,  _time and time again_ , even when such welcomed pain elicits trust. An absolute trust he had been rejected over and over again as he had been torn apart. So when the fire inside his heart snuffs down to a bare minimum, he knows Nigel could be the thing that can change and will change his view, despite knowing it is he who  **wields** Nigel’s  _satisfaction_. 

Now, he simply sighs and nuzzles his head into the crook of Nigel’s neck. Their naked bodies still tangled together in a **protective knot**. The boundaries fail to be discernible as they fail to separate. Their love’s instruments involved at bay as the younger one’s chain choke around his throat puts his bare emotions, his pain, away and locked as he  _swallows_  the one and only key. He lets the words die against the straining gullet; he doesn’t often feel things deeply and feels nothing. How vines and flowers would blossom against his metal, for  **fervency**  adheres against his bones as he finds the  **silence**  swallow him whole and  **vacancy**  washes over his eyes. 

Like a drowning swimmer desperately trying to abate the acute  _cramp_  beneath the swallowing water, Nigel’s **frenetic breathes** push to let out a strained lump, before his clenched teeth and lips ajar in a loud  _grunt_ , more like a territorial growl of a tiger. Impaling his length deep into the inescapable hold of Hannibal’s walls, as he continues to rut and entrap the slouching length, as the last hot ichorous trail dribbles down the folded length. The long  _couch_ , accommodating two  **Grecian**   **mess**  beginning to wind down along with the beating cascade of downpour. The tenebrism of the darkness sinks, as the frantic rush continues to  **surge**  and  _eject_ ,  **eject** , into the atmosphere, into the vortex of his brother’s heat as he  _overheats_  and  _implodes_. 


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nigel is injured, Hannibal touches him (a part of an ongoing thread).

He remains like a  **desolate cityscape** ; draped in cloud, just beyond the horizon of the other’s reach, across tumultuous waves. How his mountainous tide will bring him over to them, with blood flowing from a **pulsating heart.**  A heart that still hungered for an appropriate touch - yet his internal monologue screams in _defiant refusal_. The last sticky endeavor had his fire burned out and everything good about him. And there was never that much to begin with, so he’d let his  **longings**  breach and enter his heart, weeping, dressed in  _black_ , only to commit suicide and to come back as if nothing happened. 

Often in a TRANCE, reaching out, just a glance or two, reaching out in a  **whiplash**  of a moment. Fading in and out still as his vision tinges crimson, then veils in vivid black in vain. Then he’d scream into the haze, covering the  **abysmal void** and with a stutter and a sharply drawn breath, he’d be conscious again and again. 

Against all the odds, his flame had survived with a bellowing smoke. And while Hannibal and he sees each other through a  **parallel universe** , through a place where respective twin’s memories store with contemplative measures with some still ceased to be touched by him in holistic mind and heart - yet somewhere, they must cross in  **perpendicularity**. And Hannibal’s touch -  _his brother’s touch_ \- mends his heart’s holes. entangles unpooled and stagnant brain tissues to mend in knotted wholesomeness. 

Free and light and raw, as Hannibal’s touch becomes a cascading stream of gold; how every muscle flutter beneath so  _disheveled_  and  _rugged_  expanse of his flesh.  **Loosening** , the documentation of him upheld in resiliency of his perforated and dominated layer shredding beneath the pained ooze of emotions her purges himself of the coppery taste that continues to leach, despite of continuing to be left to squirm in a mire of the venom coursing through his veins. 

“Only in  **self-perseverance**  did we neglect and leave each other alone. Fucking sustainability was out of my reach, I had your touch, yet I was  _immensely_  alone.” Lips part in agape, The kismet of their unification overruling all the tales of woe and his own false bravado; lest only be this particular moment. “And of my  **resurgence**. By no means others are fucking worthy enough for such a cause.” 


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dreams of a Quiet Place || Nigel’s headcanon 
> 
> Influenced by Linkin Park’s spanning career. They were my high school anthem and they helped me to get through my depressive years after college. This is in a memory of Chester Bennington, retold by my muse (Nigel)’s struggles in his life.  
> RIP Chester. You're one of my absolute heroes.

Letting himself to move in fluid motions as he carries himself through a series of pivots, tilts, using the remarkability of its physical form like the most threatening weapon he could ever utilize, Nigel’s hardened body exemplifies all the **gruesome spillages** of blood and matters. At least the lack of self-control he fears is never-ending as his mind pulls him to consume and confuse itself to run haywired. How it creates a  **beautiful** and **wicked**  and  **convoluted** world, where the dark green pines blanket his mind, hugging the side of a jagged mountain, crouching near the edge of a cloud as he rises in a verticality to a crimson sky, as a breeze blows the globes of dew off the budding blossoms of the sleeping flowers. They turn into rose petals kissed by the morning rain as he would scent the  _petrichor_. He never rests, until he eyes a verdant garden lit by moonlight or the softness of the sun; what used to be an  **intense blaze** receding into the arms of the pooling ocean tide. 

How the air turns into **piercing screams**  and free-flowing  **anguish**  there and then, without an ounce of light as the multiple  _penumbras_  dance, breaching the  **chiaroscuro** ; a  _equilibrium_  of light and dark to pull him beneath the surface. His breaths melt into scenery, whizzing past as his memory skips. All along the roads he had  _travelled_ ; 

1) all the overwhelming  **verticality**  and unknown stretch of land beyond Lecter Estates, 

2) the  **esotericism**  of the landscape as the cemented walls expand, shift, distort and contract, suffocating him in his sleep as pulsations threaten to crumble atop him, 

3) the vacuous stretch of asphalt suctioning him right in through his  **compass** , with a point that had been changing direction after having his heart to render  _subjugated_ ; **self-lacerating**  as he belted and growled with its collision course

4) and the  **steeliness**  of unfurled, gut-wrenching  _bloodbath,_  separating the world outside with the threshold of the ambience like Red Sea. 

His mind’s slow stride returns his  **debacle**  of a body back to  _where it belongs_  - as his slouched form, the smeared blood of his mingled upon the invisible mold as he waits the gripping clasp to pull him beneath the pooled quagmire. Unlike the swooshing gunshots as his mind had simply blocked off all the needless external sensations, now a  **raucousness**  tears through the barely perceived luminescence of  _daybreak_ , as sliver of light invites him to cross to the other dimension. 

The gnarled, jagged edges of his left side breathes a separate life as a lifelong side effect still haunts him because of his lack of care and reckless,  **devil-may-care**  attitude he bores at all times. No hospitals meant there would be increased chance of his  **affliction**  to be infected and his muscles still ached in  _paroxysm_. The **involuntary spasm**  would send an unpleasant, gyrating pins and needles as if the muscle strands were grabbed from ends to ends, squeezed and twisted in opposite directions.

He is on the highway, riding towards the sunshine that screamed of vacation in the gleaming approach of the Reaper’s wall. The horizon continues to sizzle and blur, as he chases it far into past, well behind him as he refuses to feel the sun; the vivid colors and the breeze. How his mind concocts a storm, hurtling thorns turning into merciless icicles as his breaths saturate with bitterness; like winter’s cold, as hypothermia would slow his breath. Maybe it was his revitalization as the warmth fights over his form, as he feels hot sands on toes as it trickles down his throat. 

And he wonders, as he slowly sinks and plummets to kiss the ground, the **unanimous thirst** could quench any thirst, settle any hunger and negate all of his  _afflictions_  and satisfy unrealized cravings with explosion of  _flavor_. 

1) Maybe Mischa was to become an  **unborn star**  beneath the dark sky as his fingers hadn’t quite tangled in the mercilessness, 

2) maybe he and Hannibal weren’t to become **super-predators** , feeding off their respective addictions and fueling each other’s menace and mellifluousness, such a rarity among their kind. 

3) Nor Gabi’s touch had been adequate to complete him whole, as it would turn a two-faced marionette. He must take a position of a  **zugzwang** , find an  _inevitable disadvantage_  as the ever-persistent love will rise over his dogged obsession over her.  

Aggressively made so, with adamantine bones soldered beneath the conflagrations of a diabolical snare, as he bares jagged claws and bone-shattering hinges of explosive self with strong arms and warm chest, he delves beneath the core of his afflictions as he becomes numb; numb to emotions, numb to experiences, numb to life without highs and lows. 

A distinctive shape draws over where Nigel’s head lays, slanting down to rest against his scattered locks. With his slashed lips, slightly parted, quirks upward in a **flickering gleam** as the distant light beelines for his vacant gaze. Joined by red velvety caress, the free-flowing fluid overflows, as it takes on the owner’s traits. 


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hannibal: “I don’t feel safe letting you be alone when you’re in that shape.”  
> Young!Nigel verse after they escape the orphanage together.

Within himself, he knows of the  **consuming pain** , leaving his blood singing. Snapping back to his own physical person, greedy sucks of air coming between flushed cheeks, inflating lungs that cushioning a galloping heart. It’s hard to be consumed by anything other than blue and grey and crimson when the world around him is constantly reflecting the same hues in varying shades. How his own breathing becomes too rapid and shallow; a murky pond in a rainstorm with no choice but to overflow as the  **profundity**  of his nightmare deepens in its color spectrum.

Turning on one foot, his leg arcs swiftly around to give him the quick momentum he needs, as his next move was to make a break for the strewn chair and attempt to leap over it for the nearest available cover from what he assumed was an  **impending fight**. The bully he’d pushed had a dowel retrieved from the rake, he would swing it,  _blockade_  his punches,  _hinder_ his wiry limbs from ravenously reflecting the  **monstrosities**  the bigger kid would advantageously use, he’d already wounded one of his attackers; now that he would be the more crippled the other two, he had little doubt he’d defend himself during the moment of **opportunity** … which meant it was time for the person who didn’t have a weapon to take cover. 

How his haze desert sunset view tinging with  _contusions_  and  _bruises,_  which would reflect the entire spectrum of wonder and savagery, as soon, the sour taste of copper is always bitter as concrete. As he would furiously mold himself with brighter shades as he gets pummeled with such downpour. 

Sickness renders him  **supple** , as his entirety shakes with the desire of a closer touch; something other than a riposte or a jabbing haymaker. Trembling fingertips burn cinderblocks and emptiness as they sleepwalk through the drenched sheets and finds Hannibal. Any part of him as the lingering dream possesses him with such  _ferocity_  - ebbing and flowing like a half-hearted tide, instead, fills him with a sense of  **melancholia**. “What would you do for me then, these thoughts continue to swirl around my head like water being fucking sucked down the drain. I’m  _forever_  locked in the maze of stories I’ve woven.” 


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Based on a random violence meme, I tried to challenge myself and utilize all the symbols the sender has sent me.

Upon the rooftop, where he appears smaller than the speck of starlight, he feels his heart  _almost_  stop. This watercolor backdrop gives way to gray with downpour of  **rainfall**  upon the gravelly surface, as puddles  **glisten**  on the blacktop and down the shingles he crawls. 

**7. “Just get it over with. Don’t drag this out any longer…”**

With an ear to the sky as he eavesdrops. The  _conduit_  of his veins carrying upon the thunder’s pop as he is held in thrall. His pendulous perch between eternal oblivion and bare consciousness as his bones continue to soak in the  **zenith**  of breached violence as the empty space beside him concerns him. Hannibal is  **nonexistent**  in his peripheral, nor he hears even the most barest glimpse of the elder twin’s whereabouts. He asks himself as his fading voice finds rudimental strength in his duplicity; so he would cover his reprieve and the sightless eyes become combat-locked once again.

With nothing to gauge the profound incomprehension which had just taken place, all of his reserved senses draw with utmost  **precision**. All he has, squeezed until not even an ounce had left out of him. The only thing sure is his rough fingers, capable of producing the most sonorous aria, along with the  **grim requiem.**  Through his dropping reflection, he watches the pressurized air cause a great  _whoosh_ , watching the man (his killer) between the desolate emptiness and himself tumble like a slanting domino along with meat of the brain splattering all over. A fucking bull’s eye through the bastard’s forehead as he carves another  **cavern**  as the blaze scorches through the entirety of his writhing mess. His world is  _full_  of it, as the darkness itself stares back at him with its many  _twinkling_ ,  _knowing_  eyes. A small tug of cruel smirk sketches like a fine pencil line as he takes his own tumble in a disarray.   

**44. “I killed him, and I’d gladly kill him again.”**

The voices echo through his cranium as a lengthy exhale once again, zones the ocean in his eyes and knives in his teeth to parch and dull. The rivulets of blood contour away from the protruding arc of his cheekbone as he laps up his own thick and potent blood, spilled like oil. He’s the predator, the dead cadaver is the prey - how he wishes to let that be known, even as he would vanish into the bay of obsidian blackness, he would let everyone know. He would snarl and snap like howling wolves, even in the threshold of death. 

**36. “Let me die happy, at least.”**

The inevitability makes his lips bleed and tear his throats as the frayed static siev of his view regains absolute clarity. He’s still looking for a fight; as he digs the strength out of ruptured veins and leaving the blood on his palms, to remind himself that he’s more than salt stains and black water. He would smear it against his head and heart like war paint as the claws dig deeper and teeth bite hard.  **Unsheathed** , how woeful is that their paths crashed at just the wrong moment and he  _swears_ , he would SURVIVE  _despite_  such **pessimistic exudence** of his lips. 


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a random headcanon drabble in Nigel's 'canon' setting in Bucharest.

He’s  **rough edges**  and **frayed soul** and raw, pure  **pain** , but he shaped a TRAGEDY out of it and called it home. How his calloused hands bleed a darker red like  _falling rose petals_ , while golden sunrays in the darker rooms in his mind whisper through the hubbub of his thudding heartbeat.  _Nothing gold can stay._  Betrayal has lost its meaning as he watches all the  **preemptive affection** and  **limerence**  burn in the embers of his heart. How even small fires could devastate the forest of his love, for he befriends the abyss and he’s capable of  **death**. How his eyes still bloom, budding in perfect cerulean blue sea as  ****he remains engrossed in thought. He mulls over his own experience with his flesh and blood.

Ironically, he was painfully different from his doppelgänger in plethora - where with Hannibal, the flickering light had been put out and even a sliver of  _resounding humanity_  didn’t exist. Yet, Nigel found an  **unparalleled solitary,**  the enormity of his bubbling desire to find the like-minded being who he could guide through a proper metamorphoses. The bluffs of his part parted and in the sky above, stars started to twinkle as the wind grows braver and sweep the snow clouds before it. How the new moon unveiled itself and swelled in brightness, until it cast shadows on the snow-flecked ground. 

Just like Bucharest remained within the drenched blanket of  **timeless grooves** , crept in grimy residues of the communism’s past, slowly winding its way through the hollows and conflicts still, as the recesses of the bulky  _emptiness_ , swelling the despair further as he looks upon the desolate stretch of landscape towards and below the horizon. And everything passes like the  **storm** ; almost over, he would never be afraid of the new world that existed after;  _everything will be different_ , every  **frame**  will change and shift as he would be still WILLING to greet the day as raindrops become fewer and far between. 

****Just like his own _absoluteness_  of self had once reduced down as his intense gaze muddled down to an obscurity, the slanting crawl of the overhead spotlights waltzed through the atmosphere without him getting sloshed or tripping on his usual choice of substances. The familiarity of so much built-up ammunition in his body and soul makes even himself to forget how much it had been firing up inside his subconscious. 

Helping him to reach a bizarre, purgatory state where his mind is floating in a vast remnant of conflagration, with nothing left to hold onto and he finds, in times like these, that whatever an actual thought enters his mind, it either simply floats back out and make everything is gone or it would suffocate beneath his too-intense and jabbing senses. In a daze as the percussion of bongo drum aggrandized in its acuteness, the gentle reverberation manifested fully into a throbbing beat, reaching for its climax. The city itself had been built upon the  **faux-fabrication**  of a cultured city, but all it had been was dams of  **rotting hopes** and  **bittersweet memories**. 

Clinging to something that used to be  _remarkable_  and  _flawless_ , but now only sitting molded and rotting in putrescence. How perfect had it been, for a **wounded beast**  like him to reside beneath the twang of long-winded explanations, followed by suffered afflictions that would inexplicably swallow him alive. No one ever dared to prod him about Mischa, another subject that would scourge this  **cursed** , yet  _superior_  bloodline. How it stirs the relative calm of his meadow, a gentle breeze gradually picking up to accumulate into a vortex of a tornado. 


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TIME. THE ENEMY TO ALL.
> 
> Your muse is at their prime, they have lived their life to the fullest - write out your muses (almost) death scene. His canon setting drabble.

He watches the blood ribbon out of his side, the **shock of stark red**  against the asphalt, which is still  _warm_  and  _thick_  like an  **oil spill,**  retaining the sultry heat of the Bucharest summer. Like a feral dog sinking its teeth into his side, he watches the sun go down in murmurs as its waves continue to split and break before his charged hazel as the sweat runs off him. The  **fucking rabid canine**  is panting with its red tongue rolling, as a continuous trail of his own crimson dribbles as he himself becomes an embodiment of a dying venomous snake as obstinate strand of life slips away with a weakening breath. The inertia of his state of being striking such familiarity of chaos as he glimpses in that instant between attentiveness and sempiternal oblivion. 

With his reflux, even after his farewell, would have enough strength for him to strike until the point of his death is  _imminent_. His muscles had already succumbed to the heavy weight of cessession of mortality setting in. His eyes roll, gasping for breath as he gradually exhausts himself. Until his intense gleaming hazel meet his own as he glares even more fiercely. 

As he gazes into **undulating mirage** , of its fulfilled life coming to an end, it aggravates him to pursue his thriving life with wild resolve more in return. Those drawn-out waking seconds stretching into fuzzy consciousness. Only coming to senses in only minutes’ snatches, before slipping off into a temporary  _oblivion_. The only sensation that he is aware, painfully striking against everything else which mars the sense of gravity is his own fingers clutching onto the bottle of already bone-dry whiskey with a vice grip, enough to dig his talon-like fingers and break the curve of the glass as he still confines himself behind the dimmed office in his club. The divine dulcet flavor notes had already degraded into rotting putridness inside him, desolate and muggy, with withered petals and clumps of vines manifesting into lodged lumps in his throat. An  **invisible shackle** placed around his ankles as his spine tingles with tenseness, the petrification becomes too burdensome and weighty for him to be liberated from.

His animal eyes gleam wild, with the presence of blood, he could feel the flaring embers rise up from the pit of his stomach. His eardrums ring with countless reverberations of gongs going off, suffocating all the other sensations around his danky and stuffy flat, drowning with bleak darkness and equal dreary whirl of snowdrift continuing to entrap them into his own world. Burying himself deep in the well of a forgotten time as he carves moments in thoughts, to regain the nostalgia of memories that have collapsed his musings of involuntary tales as never did he want them to be left UNHEARD. The world he wants to entrap forever, yet the wretched reel of film becomes a both beautiful  **redemption** and **damnation**.

More than the dog’s recurrent disappearance, he blames himself for the conjured image, for not letting that clutch tighten around his sanity. The invisible lump growing in mid-exhale as it turns bitter than bile, he could feel every chord stand up and vibrate with brewing tension, especially around his wrists and the curve of his neck, that familiar sensation of unexplainable surge of emotions. The English vocabulary lacked the means to define this enigmatic conundrum. Most likely, it had been self-annihilation.

* * *

Now, the bitter chill creeps within his bones as the intensity grows even more despair as the time halts. He’s all wrapped up in the  **catapulted hurricane**  of the churning swirl of the hydraulic dam, as the breeze threatens to sweep him off his feet into the very abyss he hasn’t quite returned from. As if he’s stepped into **another dimension** ; none of the things outside the space which they occupy matters, or he’s in too much of a obscured haze to conceptualize it within his fragmented synapses and muddled memories. 

He could still recall the pitter-patter of the rain, his  _hot breaths_  against the window and _entanglement_  of his limbs as he contorted and distorted, too vividly clear in the back of his eyeballs. Those pass through as pins and needles intensify, he wants to shut everything off and let his body remain in an empty carapace. The torpor sets in as his usual confident stride _drags_ , the weight of his fully loaded revolver offers a  **fleeting solace** upon such trepidation.

Letting himself free from the indistinguishable quagmire, a blend of heavy mist and his molasses-like steps become too  _languid_  and  _grueling_. A minute pinch of his brows confirm how mundane a task brings  **exhaustion**  over his battered frame, emaciated over with lack of shuteye and solidification of fleeting memories. What it seems a lightyear away gradually shortens, the unreachable ectoplasm of unregistered movements is the first to register. The immediate connection coming together in an indestructible chain link. He had depleted the inhumane strength to seek what’s HIS, for the earth will always echo back the beauty. SHE IS BEAUTY. And no longer he would allow himself to be sabotaged, yet such gleaming testament of his evolution collapses, for its varnish 

He only perceives, because he breaths **violence like oxygen.**  His diaphanous irises growing even more brimming, the salty moisture pools as he sleepwalks through it all. He’s still not sure if he’s slipping off to the other side of the dimension or finally succumbing into a deep, deserved oblivion, of its nothingness. As he would run away from his demons, choking on his memories of HER, he’s being haunted by their **unblossomed love**  still held upon the vehement clutch of his hand. If he hadn’t been feeling too fucking  _inebriated_  with his own vulnerability and memories confining him, he would’ve had already disposed of those  _Poliția Română_  without ever batting an eyelash - for he’s being haunted and rendered USELESS as waves of the past crashes him against the sharp-edge stones and razor boulders. 

The moon slumps, the beast within him still howls and the fields and the valleys of the Bucharest landscape still relent. He meanders  **downhill** , eyes continually ablaze as if painting a heatwave full of crimson, concocting **fields of velvet**  as it fills his lungs for the last time; the red tickling, caressing, traveling further still. His tightly wound core paving way as he gazes upward, to allowing the last remnant of flames to lick him before he extinguishes into his fire - for he’s become too temperamental and just  _one ignition_  would get him to break him into a million pieces, to make him shatter. 

How he would and had go against the feeling that resides in  **every fucking inch** of his own skin, for HER, just for her as he’d gamble with his own sanity and let every inch of his body whisper. He’s probably the only hopeless one that would become her ghost - to haunt her in her sleep and in her daydream, slip through the walls to caress her, to be in every wind that blow, to be in the every goddamn place her eyes will lay on, because she’ll be left with no choice, but to remember; with such  **rawness**  and  **realness**  with ruthless authenticity. 


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Post-Canon Nigel headcanon where he SURVIVES.

Submerged beneath the rippling iridescent **gossamer veil** , it’s his _safe haven_ \- even without the strokes of his own making, smeared upon the porous walls of the club. Nothing a cloudy mystic whirl of  _obscurity_  and  _bombardment_  of blazing halos and radioactive stream of technicolor wouldn’t solve. The time  _warps_  and the evanescence manifests upon the stampede of zealous individuals, along with copious amount of confessions from his part. 

The waltzing of stolen breaths, thrumming  _palpitations_ , quivering flesh and sweet exquisite release of deadened nerves paint over the ceiling like a sand painting. With each threatening press of his heart, the grains swirl and hurtle across the ambiance as a lost cause. And his sempiternal stretch of  _daydreams_  and  _nightmares_ , he’s drowning further in the  **fatalism**  of his reality. It doesn’t stop him from wallowing in the pain of heartache nor demons in his mind to sit on his shoulder, whisper the words of oblivion and limbo as wounds fail to heal. 

He’s  **hollowed out** , a  _vacuous_  gaze shooting out with no purpose. The grandeur of the tree, of its sap drained as the lush green and its pungent scent of vitality drains out.  **A carapace without its thriving host.** Yet, that very emptiness swells his incessant thoughts, continuously singing its stanzas and rhythms through his broken heart. He wouldn’t sing a devastating **suicidal requiem**  again in his  _stifled pain_  and _murmured comfort_.

With a petrified, broken and septic heart clutched close to the chambers of his prison, Clammy palms elicit an  **imperceptible**  twitch, the slightest of a movement. Spilled defeat and desolate gloom continues to drench him whole in undulating waves, waves after waves, as frozen façade eases in an expression of shattered coldness. There’s no _marvel_  nor a feeling of  _triumph_ , for he could still feel the path of thorns of his affliction; its prick on his skin, nevertheless the bleeding as it became indelible ink of his **quixotic love.**  

The confines of the hospital room dwells with familiar presence as haloes of amorphous shapes slowly clarify and he’s immediately bombarded with bedazzled blindness - and he’s forced, yet again to shut his eyes, as  _gravelled_ parchness licks through his esophagus, making him to hack. 


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mun (the writer) meets Muse. In his canon setting when he's injured.

He looks like broken rays, beaming out him like **liquid exudence**  of golden sunlight and my skin recoils at the heat, but relishes the burn. I wonder if I am in love with him; can’t be in love with someone who  _doesn’t_  belong to me, but when I’m around him, the herds of butterflies that have taken residence in my stomach riot. It’s a quite wonderful feeling. For the universe keeps putting him in my life though and I don’t know how to avoid stars, how to break apart  **constellations**.  _I can’t hide from a galaxy._

How his fragile ribs flutter and contract, failing to extend  **beyond**  the squeezed diaphragms of his lungs as breathless pants continue to ricochet off his head, along with his fostered  _submission_. HUMILIATION. This is what he had been rewarded with, in his yearning and desire, in his desperate search for answers. And when he sought  **accumulation**  of power, in return, he had been entirely stripped away in it and in his  _dreary yielding_  of his sanity, he both had lost his  **irreplaceable love** and  **his life.**  

He had never sought to be pounced and pummeled down, muted in his resounding desire to search for unanswered  _grievance_ , of his memories becoming scattered ashes and scrubbing his skin raw and bloody. A repeated crashing and  **bedazzlement**  upon the earth as he encompasses his own darkness. How condensed teardrops etch lines of corrosive acid upon his facade as none of is intrepidity etches upon his facade, minus his  _abysmal_ , caved intensity still lingering upon sun-like hazel.

He remains a broken storm, growing out of his rusting shell and after all the suffocating that holds him down with such vehement strength, but no. He doesn’t remain its prisoner as the world continues to echo loud and clear in his head. The very image of him in agony still held him in captive, yet his heart tissue wraps around the gleaming blade and tucks it in. Gives it a place to sleep for the night as he places the sound of a slash with the muffled gasps into the bedsheets. 

Jagged stitches might tear, more discharge would spill and mar the parched earth that continues to  **fissure**  beneath his teetering feet. I could feel the clock ticking down as the essence of his strength continues to sleep within him. How THAT serves as the brandished bullet, unfired with such ferocity to make him so abundantly alive; and I witness the moment of when his  **tenacious mind** would draw blank and he’d slip into the familiar realm of oblivion yet again.

His seething mind races, yet his limbs are threaded with such discrepant TORPOR. Salt and blood drips linger upon his silent, empty lips and the temptation to give up there and then rises into an epic proportion, just like how his body glistens with heat and salt and want - and I look at him like he’s my own _sacred shrine,_ **a monument of salvation**. How my soft digits brush over his pulse point, growing effervescently strong and steady. 

Through his minute shifts in his expressions, I could feel his unconscious lacing with such **virulent venom**  of his past and continuously eggs on to give himself off to the resounding darkness. No one ever defied nor ever summoned enough courage to veer through his fortified walls, threatening and thrumming to squash anyone who dared to REPROACH him. As another day revels and unfurls with such animosity and monstrosity, the dormant form teetering between the pendulous afterglow that lingers in the western sky as the sunset continues to push the tenacious brightness peeking through the clumps of gray clouds. Acting as a  _shroud of undying day and his undying vessel._

Eyes open and how I’m greeted with such resonance inside of him. A widening smile becomes a distinctive line beneath his heartbeats and movements, still rumbling as a beast’s heart. 

“I didn’t think you would give up your life so easily. At least not in my  _fucking_  book.”   


I suppose, he survived because of LIFE’s  **urgent impulse**  to continue. He might have been shot down by his  _hubris_ , yet never would he ripped away from my flesh to be dragged me into the darkness where I can never escape.


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nigel's nightmare.

The soil buries in his heart deeper, through the imperceptible rise and fall of his slatted ribcage, than where his bones lie undisturbed.  ****His body is such a treacherous thing; as his own hard and roughened fingertips become brittle as they quiver into the air in such paradox. While the blood still seem to hemorrhage out of his body, the **festering rot** was running rampant upon the strained strands of his muscles, the itches he couldn’t scratch digging beneath down to his muscles, aggregating there to latch their  _tenacious_   _grip_  upon the expanding stretch. 

He feels as if he’s being  **skinned alive**  as his epidermal swelters and endless ulcers form to drown him in a white, viscous, watery discharge. And he digs through it all with his own hands; slow from the start as he slowly and steadily work upon the nutrient soil, until he is FORCED to stop where the  **roots**  emerge from the cold and moist crumble of  _familiar texture_. Pulverized bones and clattering of teeth, the hollows of plump cheeks and its putrescent ROTTING.

And he hears the deadened sound of a breaking glass, of his conscience and his heart. The shine in the  **madness**  and  **insanity**  across his hazel irises rampant as they turn glistening sharp like blades, yet not quite threatening. It doesn’t have to exude thunder and impervious downpour to register the murmur resonating through the ambiance. He had consumed and devoured her; for there’s imagery sitting on his tongue and remarkable sadness and regret in the pool of his hazel. First, they’re  _cold_ ,  _detached_ , intrepid even. Yet they shift oh-so-dramatically as if a  **harpoon**  had impaled his gut and the clench of his heart makes breathing unbearable.

He has gone through the period where the true concept of death had hovered around the premise of his  _fucking_  being and knocked him upon the realm of Limbo as it watched the  **whirling strands** of smoke of ETERNAL HELLFIRE engulf him. Dispersed throughout the atmosphere with increasing crackling as he fades into whispering notes of the requiem. The warmth intensifies, yet he manages to stand up, only to crumble onto his knees as he would empty out what little contents he has had with a mediocre meal. 


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nigel's nightmare take #2, where whatever he touches dies.

He has become a black hole in his universe and he finds himself constantly on the  **event horizon** , looking into his darkness and wondering what will become of him as he delves deeper and deeper into it. Watching his own light spiral around him, being ripped from his flesh, ribboning AWAY from his fingertips and never giving an ounce of strength to pull harder, to fail to  _liberate_  him from the darkness where he could never escape. 

How his own skin feels like a  **phantom**  passing in the obscurity of the burning hour in the zero dead of night. Even the warmth of his breath scripts into the shadows atop his bones as the azure of the nightfall deepens still. And he sits in the midst of the crossroads; of crooked and bent life as he’s dulled by absence of replenishment and renewment. 

_Such violent ideal_ , and his  **vitriol touch**  as eyes with dark anvils lace with choked, false laughs.  ****His body is such a treacherous thing; as his own hard and roughened fingertips become brittle as they quiver into the air. The very air that remain all too desolate, standstill and unmoving as the world paints in the colors of bruises and contusions. All he sees is its head and nails and sharp teeth broken, exposed in the thin air as the rusts and ashes of his doing melts into his bones. Dripping, slowly dripping into his heart and into his own vessel. Beneath the eldritch requiem of howling banshees as he takes another life form in gut-wrenching apathy.

_Or was it apathy?_  Never would he fervently reach through the barren soil, his dirtied fingertips excavating through the vines of his past, clumped and kept off from strangers. He becomes his own entity, the HARBINGER OF DEATH consequently seeking to be transcended his dimension. And  **that creature**  - be it malicious or pure - is now extinct, no beast would still thrive and cause pandemonium with his sanity. 

With each threaded sanity holding him in whole, the perforated holes widen and pull together with such elasticity and each sensation agglomerates into being like a wave breaking on the rocks and he feels packed into the grime of his sweat and soil, where he can’t tell he’s  _hallucinating_  or having a frantic fit of  **hysteria**. It had been painfully evident that his cold, austere façade breaks as soon, only black arms will embrace his hollowed soul. How lungs fill with ice cage, his eyes clamped shut as  **hubbub of dead** tangles in his cranium. His warm palm would offer  _opiate assistance_ , to sever nerve endings and let himself jump into another dimension; as his cracked skin and bloodshot eyes gaze long into the sleepless horizon. 


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A random headcanon pertaining to Nigel's attraction to violence (and its vicious cycle).

**You are the first thing and the worst thing I know** ; albeit bridges are burned, wounds are healed just to be torn at the seams once again, he is forgotten and life continues to pass by as each sky falls to a sunset in the dipping horizon in the distance. This is where he finds himself and the truths of his inner being -  _beneath_  the shadows of rock bottom, only he knows there is far more **gruesome** places in hell than the simple flat grounds of the earth’s edge. How he would force it in his head that rock bottom is as low as one can fall, but he’d been to places where he could only  _dream_  of rock bottom. 

He could declare, _loud and clearly_ , that it could and does get worse. For he’d lived there for so long, but what is destined for his future will always reveal itself. He’s either from the frozen,  **blank chasms**  of monochromatic winter, as he would sprout his snuffed passion, fervently reaching through the barren and desolate soil as he would transcend and seek resurgence through shifting dimension or let his brain had been pummeled down beneath the blazing tendrils of gnawing fire, of its  **technicolor**  and  **intensity**  as his copper statue would rust and melt,  _repurposed_  and  _scattered_  into naught.

Just like how he had collapsed onto the cold concrete and survived this gutting as he held his spilling viscera upon his hands, he could survive  **anything** ; as long as his pulsing heart still contained its warmth and driven  _virility_. His plump lips thin marginally as his jaw sets, in  **defiant protest**. He teeters between the pendulous afterglow that lingers in the western sky as the sunset continues to push the tenacious brightness peeking through the clumps of gray clouds. Acting as a shroud of undying day. The shadows waltzing as his wobbling form throws patterns on the earth and gravelly verticality of the ground as they elongate. 

Never would he, let his knees bend for vulnerability threatens to overrule his violent ideals and their words of vitriol. They may have been already tattooed beneath the eyes of darkened irises, dilated with bruises and contusions.  ****Nigel feels more **spellbound**  with the kick of spawned intrigue and something entirely else. To his own untimely  _demise_ , he has nothing to strip, for his sanity is spilling on its own in its wake. 

He would go through such vicious cycle, through his painful procedure, of growing his own monster within him to reveal his  _truest_  and  _rawest_  nature. The most primal trait to wash over him like a  **profound radiation**. Every somatic cell subjugated by the electrical charge of the flaring expansion; for even lions could wear the lamb’s disguise as a believable yet transient mask to those who are still oblivious. The true guileless preys of the world, but then, even lions aren’t made of steel and adamantine, a sliver of bleeding hearts upon the strewn components. Maybe those strings of broken dolls were the neglected conductor upon his failed  **orchestration**.


	26. Chapter 26

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nigel explores Hannibal's collection of sketches and finds the one of him that means specifically much to him.

He supposes, each stroke of graphite could become something akin to a knot in his throat - fragments of  _braided nylon_  that could choke his trachea, making it hard to swallow. Such  **memories** , twisted and tied up, gasping for air he so desperately needed or it could become a lulling waft of smoke, the initial puff that would settle his frantic mind to unperturbed solace once again. How such interlacing memories, both  _afflicting_  and  _blissful_ , ends up suffocating his soul as they become the corded weight laced with MERCURY; keeping everything inside, leaving little room for release as he would succumb beneath the noxious poison. 

How they leave such little room for release, that exudence that would transcend Nigel Lecter’s ADAMANTINE entirety; material drawn tight over every inch of his tongue as the words remain unuttered, yet they tear through his windpipe all the same as the strong gullet catches in the bonded twine, preventing anything from escaping. Such hurt and pain had been prevalent since his orphanage years, with the knot tugging at his wants and needs  - looping the idea of oblivion in his mind. The air had been such a  **luxury**. All he could smell is livid bruises and rugged and jagged scabs in the midst of healing, only to be spread into chasms as soon as they healed. He supposes, that memory would be the weight he will carry with him forever. Such weightless smears and trail could provide such pulsation and punctuation of his heartbeat as calloused fingertips ghost over the thick fiber of the drawing pad. 

His wiser eye catches upon all the between puncture and play, the pause between each mark. Yes, even with his  _untrained eye,_  such  **familiarity**  of his twin holding the sharpened graphite as his non-perturbable lifeline becomes constellations in all of their beauty becomes uncontested. Every shakes, quivers, the inconsistencies as the resilience and ability to heal grew as his marksmanship and perseverance did reminds him of each and every scar that covers his skin. 

And there it is, the  _darkness_  built up beneath the  **summer breeze**  as it had curled against every surface of his skin as saltwater licked. The destructive force of storms and hurricanes clinging upon his glorious bareness as broken strength of months ago remain stuck between the crack of his bones and sewn deep into his veins. The sadness had build up between his ribs and had taken up residence in the softest parts of his skin; it still does and he will continually tear himself apart, piece by piece, losing the scattered remnants of what he once was that turns into a dull knife’s edge that scrape against the outer lining of his mind. Until raw and agitation takes over his brain. 

He’d always be that devastatingly beautiful disaster, sweeping everything in this reality into a blur and his heart would continue to align with the stars. He’s embodiment of a sketch revealed right in front of him; put together and fallen onto the floor in unglued pieces as a whiff of murmuring wind flutters the distinguishable edge of where he begins and where he ends. 


	27. Chapter 27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Night’s Brushstrokes || Kid!Nigel HC

He could feel the crisp of autumn making its way through the trees, as they snake and rustle through the midnight blue. He wants to lay back and let the night make him and his problems feel small; because in the grand scheme of things, they don’t really matter anyway, yet he’s all  **beaten bloody bones** , with the scars from leather and valleys and hills of the knuckles as his skin still  _scream_  and  _shriek_  from the open wounds. How traumatic life seeks joy in the cornucopia of art created from his flesh, sounds created by the bent up and curled fingers, only to be stolen by the demons within the  **recesses**  of his mind. He’s the  _blackened blue_  of the body which the traumatic life inhabits; for he breaths the  **scab**  of its wounds, the  **nail scratches** on its bent and curled fingers. What’s written over the month of August comes in September; everything cuts deeper and further into his skin and he has no one to tell about. Everyone has those dull pains that just echo inside that no one would ever hear, yet he knows he isn’t a  **solitary survivor**  and a  **warrior**  who continues to be  _hurt_ , continues to  _bleed_  and continues to be in  _pain_. 

But it’s how he handles himself that defines him; it doesn’t matter if he’s hurt, because he falls down too many times, it matters only if he takes the chance to stand up that extra one time. He’s the specs of tiny matter, particles burning rapidly in the sky as one day, he’ll be up in the night, shining brightly than he ever has, or ever could down the earth. The stars might remind him to be hopeful that the Lecters will still be together, with their souls intertwined into one light, not separated by thousands of miles in-between. For he will divest himself into the fantasy, the one he hopes he will inevitably come across, the one that seduces his mind from within the murky shadows to the scintillating heavens. It is that licentious, hopeless **fantasy**  that pushes him through the  **capriciousness**  of his mind. For there’s deafening silence within all the escaping of the  _chaotic percussion_ of the surroundings as he stands alone. Carrying stories, dreams, nightmares, scars as black ink etches into his flesh. Enough to talk of clumped heart and all the perpetuity of aches - yet, he sees a glimpse of  **possibility** out there in the world. Certainly larger than Hannibal or he. 

For this renders to be a momentary here alone, as the moment’s solidarity disperses clarity as he remains battered and bruised, yet never  **broken**. Not in this moment as he remains  _intrepid_  and  _sculptural_  as ever. Staring into the stretching and shifting horizon as possibilities await. Though his own brushstrokes remain prickly, burning bright with  _technicolors_  of screaming marrows and bones, he remains undying and unconquered - even as the buttery warmth of his cheek exudes to cut through the  **unperturbed**   **ambiance**  - and even when two blades, slicked wet tickle his ear, making soaked clothes from the afternoon to cling onto his back, such delicate kisses in the breeze melts him down as the wind all moves like a brushstroke. His world may remain insane, yet it’s surprisingly liberating to think on that as he yet again, envisions a violent scene in his head. How the  _demon_  inside him, who is malevolent and greedy and wants to strike other bullies down  **blossom**. Another night, with his head  _hitting static_ once again. 


	28. Chapter 28

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nigel as Personification of TRAGEDY.

**I am certain that I have been here as I am now a thousand times before, and I hope to return a thousand times.  – Goethe**

Sometimes he sees  _shadows_  of who he was in others and marvel at how far he’d come. Other times, he sees  _flashes_  of who he wants to be in others and thinks to himself ‘ **he will be.** ’ Yet, all the ubiquitous concepts of love and loss and all that won’t take him home, for everything becomes lost in the cranial fuse box of his  **archives** , as does the exasperation of delirium kicks in and all of his retained memories become  _bleached_  or  _perforated_  with sharp knives, beyond recognition and reparation. 

He observes the principles of  **reincarnation**  everywhere in life; through the cycles of nature, day and night, the  **cyclic motion**  of the sun, earth, moon and solar system. He also perceives the principles of reincarnation reflected around him each and every day; a plant grows, dies and releases its seeds. Its seeds burrow into the earth, begin to sprout, and new life is reborn once again. How his empty eyes, which had parched all of his tears as they could no longer cry, would effervescently  _glisten_  and still remain  **smoldered**  with rapid fire within his irises. How his empty soul had spilled and poured like a poem with beautiful words, as  **remnants**  of his heart would seep into the blank canvas with its own tremble and percussion.

His heart is as  **hollow**  as the dusty, bone-dry glass bottle he’s holding. How his eyes became cold as he gazes down the motionless whiskey drenched with icicles of the snowfall above and beyond them. The misty horizon continually stretches as his own spilled blood inks in with poison. His unspoken words rendered useless, just like the story of a warrior he hadn’t quite yet to finish. How the frozen slush, an  _amalgamation_  of his spilled blood and color-drained pallidness stain the frigid landscape with such  **destitute** , as dusts of snow and the struggles scraped from the picture-perfect view tells a story otherwise. 

He feels it, all the  **agony** , all the  **sadness** , all the  **hopelessness**  and all the  **pain** , hurting him like little cuts all over his body. They would widen as they turn to chasms, tumultuous rifts upon his copper statue as such spectre of his scar tissues darken in their hues. The darkness he hadn’t feared threatens to swallow him whole and some part of him is saying that he should sleep, be dormant, plunge deeper and deeper into an eternal oblivion. Yet, such **reincarnation** , or the rebirth of energy, or life, occurs all around him in different shapes and forms every day and perhaps this is why it comes to him as something  _intuitive_ , something that  **resonates**  the very nature, the very essence of life with such rawness and realness. 

How the burnt ashes of himself becomes his emotion in the form of tears.  _And when will he be a phoenix?_ To rise from the ashes and get back up again and again and again? He’d become too  **temperamental**  and feel as if it’s just one ignition tmore that will get him to pulverize and become  **nonexistent**. For he’s always been the erratic one, but now he’s probably the hopeless one. 

He also see that his numerous lives, and everything around him, follows a  **fundamental pattern** ; that of  _change, growth, transformation_  and  _evolution_.  We see that all of life goes through a maturing process at different rates and different velocities.  Thus to many of us, the maturation process of the soul through the process of reincarnation sounds just as instinctively and fundamentally correct as any other maturing process in life.  


For wounds are healed just to be torn at the seams once again after all the bridges are burned. He will be forgotten and life will continue to pass by as each sky falls to a sunset in the smeared distance. Beneath the  **cerebral** ,  **tangible**  dream that doesn’t have to make sense, as the walls continue to melt, yet life creeps into  _promises_  and  _mantras_ , yet his ears remain deaf and eyes blind. For he holds a black hole in his hand; everything and everyone he tough are destroyed and lost forever. He, who possesses this trenchant way, and his vein should mix with the one who had crossed him; as he drowns in the ocean of HERS every damned time, as he walks on eggshells of  **fragility**  that is him. 


	29. Chapter 29

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Foreshock and Aftershock || Headcanon Drabble  
> Nigel's death.

He has to be a creator of his own sea; to  _plunge_  into a familiar tragedy as Nigel takes the stars right out from the midnight sky. Clutching them by the throat, for they’re nothing to be scared of, for he’s already got stardust clumped between his eyelashes and gaseous miasma in his veins. He strains to reach his tip-toes, to let himself eternally lost in galaxies as he remains pliable, shatterable. 

It will be easy then, with them right between his fingertips as the  _invisible tangibility_ of such simplicity, such authentic definition of his violence held against the split bone arena of his skull as he feels the light fill up every crevice of his body. He’ll put the constellation to shame as everything becomes cold cold cold. He’s cold and it’s freezing, for he lost everything and he’s emptying out without any means to recover. 

How his mind changes like a seascape.  _Everchanging_ ,  _ever-embracing_  while in return, he’s reciprocated by something that’s about morph into something of nightmares. Blood rushing in his ears and the suppressed tremble of his lips and the millions of mantras whirling round and round in his still unsettling brain to snuff all the muffled shuffling. Gabi’s not going to love him back, for  _sparkling_  and  _swaying_  billows of flame-like love had extinguished - with no more of their _shared breathes_ and  _breeze_  rustling the foliage of their intense love, deepened with a setting darkness and bathing moonlight swaying against the ledge of the windowsill he had blessfully basked and buried.

Now, his own looming unconscious swarms with a bitter chill, quickly replacing the warm, rosy puddle of light cocooning him. The winter is a long reach away from his grasp, but he could still register the  _barren, dreadful_  snowfall within his already shattered heart, which remains unperturbed except morbid images flashing across as a flipbook of overexposed photographs. The desire won’t cease until his last drop of blood gets to the river vein as he embraces in the bathing crimson. Such hesitancy will become naught, for he’s willing to dive into her each and every day. 

In his expected, laconic comatose, he sees himself as he turns into an  _astral body_ , everything in his mind becomes blur until the heavy fog gradually clears up. His body reflected in his own very hazel. More than the lifeless limbs,  _shredded_  and  _ripped_  like voodoo doll that had haunted him in his childhood years. The essentiality of him remains DEAD, for he’s both a hopeless romantic and a complete cynic at the same time. 

The gale, thunderstorm and the angrily beating waves frantic and growing more urgent, desiring for devouring anything and everything as his memory remains intact all the same, yet the upheaval within his mind _too great_ against his nonhealing wounds. He remains buried beneath the primordial haze, blurring, ankle-deep in midnight rains. He’s attuned to the onslaught of shadows cast as frantic pearls of catastrophe rolls upon with each lub-dub of his heart, with each strained, waning breath.

* * *

Beside the physical  _debilitation_  that had rendered Hannibal out of commission, no one came remotely close even trying to  _comprehend_  his atramentous moods, gloomy and miserable. Uncharacteristically forlorn of comfort and devoid of a clutch of balance to lean back to. Even when the caterpillar turned into an imago, the last stage of his transformation, emerging from the cocoon to become and soar into the vast sky as a glorious butterfly required significant amount of vigor and affliction. 

He had been aware of the surroundings as he reclines against the unperturbable comfortableness; the licking hot water which literally melting all the tensions in his muscles, the exertion, both from his  _distress_  and bubbling  _anticipation_. He seems to melt away into a seeming nothingness as his memories whisper and surge into his expansive mind and melds him into the immeasurable stretch of the horizon before him. He will gain appetite, such flair of his life back as his mind would be scrubbed clean of all the memories. He doesn’t forget easily nor forgives; for each sky falls to a sunset in the distance and life will continue to pass. Soon, he’d find himself and the truths of his inner being; even beneath the shadows of rock bottom. 

Hannibal doesn’t have to remind himself of such far more gruesome places in hell than the simple flat grounds of the earth’s edge. He’d been to places where he could only dream of rock bottom, for he had lived there without the  _destined future_ that will always reveal himself through the supreme moment. For beauty is everywhere and comes in many forms. He drifts upon the precipice of the sea breezes and swims along beds, even when the promise of his untimely denouement is at his hand, blossoms into fraying strength and roots underneath him. 

The skin is caressed with the healing itch as hours have been spent awake,  _contemplating_ , divulging far deeper. A destructive beauty, of a series of extravagant events that will hurtle him into a revolving door of  _bliss_  and  _chaos_.  **Perspective**  fuels the timeline, gracing or befouling the very nature of his moments that flood his spirit with such velocity. 

Through the  **dichotomy**  of pain and pleasure, Hannibal bites into the most forbidden fruit of all; and the taste of it never leaves his mouth. How such possessed strength that had propelled him out of sempiternal darkness gnaws through his haunting dreams, in the artifice of tethering love in a world obsessed with pain and hurt as such revelation holds the power to seize him in paralyzation. A **jolting sensation**  resonates from his spine, but his gaze remains  _unperturbed_ , immobile as if a static electricity had frozen the concept of time. 

The  **star-lit void**  of his brother’s gaze is the first Hannibal Lecter notices, for it devours all of his senses; the same charged fervor he would occasionally witness as it remains ENDLESS. Of having no time and consciousness in its wake, of having too much heat and pressure that it would burn him into pieces. He could feel the coinciding response of life and death, acting as a threat with Nigel’s overwhelming desire and frequently ultimately beating heart. The conduits of the heartbeat too extreme that it would tear its walls and wore out its chambers. Hannibal foresees the end as it would have left the younger twin  _deserted_ ,  _thirsty_  and  _burnt_. He trembles with such **foreign emotion;**  as he relishes the sparks of bliss and safeness he once had felt. 


	30. Chapter 30

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Irrelevant, but this is me trying to write as SCAR from the Lion King.

All of the animal kingdom chants his name like in revered mantra as he had been the most domineering being this earth had ever witnessed, as they walk upon -  _in which case he must be that very earth_ \- HIS claimed land. He’s not bound  **anywhere** , yet HE IS the  _earth_  and  **this land**. How the zephyr swirls and swirls even when he’s at peace and he breaths cyclones when he could make anyone to slip into nothingness, its  _nonexistence_. 

He moves like untraceable  _air;_ surreptitious, ominously whirling, like a  **storm-announcing breeze**  that would drown anyone with its first inhale taken. With such gust of passion and hurricane and the tempest and the cold; upon the ravaged dessicated garden of thorns and debris, he paints the fresh blast of a new day rising. His imperviously black mane scatters about in that very wind, with such _vivisecting gaze_  that would render anyone to be locked in paralyzed paroxysm. 

He would not be an earth-bound misfit when he’s the very parched soil and ground. He goes AGAINST all the currents and makes this sky of his home. With warranted gaze full of maliciousness, as his inquisitorial and piercing gaze watches the talons of his front paw dig deeper into Mufasa’s ravaged cadaver; as blank brown eyes and an exhausted, an imperceptibly faint smile aims at the sky, AWAY from his snarling howl. 


	31. Chapter 31

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 9\. Your muse (Hannibal) wraps their hands tightly around my muse(Nigel)’s neck.

Lost himself in a sea of stars, the quietness and the sound of  **midnight breeze** , of its _comfortable silence_  intensifies as a gnawing bonfire on a cold night out in the woods fervently push against his gullet. There shouldn’t be no biding time, for the darkness constitutes collapsing walls as his unuttered words remain safely stowed away for now. 

The urge is unstoppable, like a continuous torrent streaming out of him as his aura seem to boil over with fiery bubbles. He’s  _writhing_  inside, compelled by the need to engage in a **brutal savagery** , yet despite letting his gaze defiantly meet with Hannibal’s, he’s reaffirmed of this connection; which had been established through their times of  **unrivaled passion.**  The toned, almost litheness of his fit body arching and pressing as the breaths within each silence and those spaces in between begins to lengthen. To further the immediate closeness of skin as their sides and thighs and calves touch, yet the contact merely  **automatic** ; it all feels, but  _natural_. 

It feels a lot like coming home; like every jagged, broken piece of the world is drawn to his universe’s center and finally, once again, fitted together in a slipping consciousness. The fieriness subsides and transcends into a pure, raw lust. He’s the beauty found in ruins, as his body remains such a treacherous thing; as his own hard and roughened fingertips whip round Hannibal’s bare midsection. With each unwinding thread of fortress holding him in whole, the  **perforated holes**  widen and pull together with such elasticity and each sensation agglomerates into being like a wave breaking on the rocks and he feels packed into the wall behind him. 

How sky bleeds with his favorite colors, concluding with a deep shade of crimson as the looming comfort of blackness presses on with its irregularity - and his own fingers grasp whatever  _tangible_  is near (the belt buckle, then delving a hand into the heated protrusion) before letting a contained flame instigate into  **blazing fire,** spilled forth between them. 


	32. Chapter 32

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> headcanon about different languages Nigel speaks.

  * **hc + languages - in order (Lithuanian, French, Romanian and English)**



He has emotions in his  _brain_  and pain in his  _chest_ ; unlike most people with migraines and fervent heart, every breath seems shorter and every inch seemingly look longer from his **hyper-subjective mind**. He wishes his mind was controlled via a system of levers and buttons, instead of the liberated free incline and decline of mountainous hills and steep precipice valleys. No gray zones with only stark contrast of white and black. Allowing him to control his headspace with a manual clarity of minimalism, instead of pointillism. 

Lithuanian is his  _stream of consciousness,_  that he continuously feels no matter what, no matter where he ends up. Though his brain waves have begun to feel more and more mundane, however unfamiliar. In the vast expanse of the world, such  **treasured memory** becomes  _treacherous_  in a blink of an eye; forlorn sadness persists and contentment vanishes along with the recollection of his mama and father’s voices. 

He has an affinity for letting his expansive and scattered mind unfold; and each syllable becomes a component of his optical illusion. The grandeur of  _delusion_ , a mirage upon his parched desert of his youth. He would either drown beneath the  **surging flashflood** as he would bury all the  **sensibility**  and  **rationale**  until he’s deep under, drowned in fear and loneliness as his copper would drain and remain pallid. Porcelain and shattered. French, that’s how the language feels, despite it being profoundly associated with romanticism. Not only the language, but the rugged scenery of grimed and stripped off buildings with graffiti-covered walls and chipped exterior of the rundown club he used to work all signify the desolation of life he once endured. 

He once again finds himself in the **concrete jungle** , where drab  _putrescence_  of adulterated crack, piss, cheap booze and sex invade his nostrils with such potent measure. His essence, his  **fundamentality**  seeps with the unfathomable depth of abysmal prussian-gray, the color of livid bruises. As coarse and rough as his accented, threatening baritone, the technicolors of the muted depth lay upon his skin, on the verge of blossoming further, to become such leaden pain upon the sinews and joints of his adamantine bones. Refusing to  _shatter_  and _break_ , even beneath the inevitability of severed mortality. 

So he remains in the  **impasse**  of English; his THIRD language, the  **ubiquitous language**  of the universe. He has never understood conflicted emotions either, yet he always thought that the moment he felt  _doubt_  or  _confusion_ , he lets his thoughts revert to his eloquent poeticism; that could either take a direct jab or find its winding way until his mind sets in stone. 


	33. Chapter 33

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hc + childhood dreams

He recalls the day he stood  **shoulder to shoulder**  against his brother, along with about a hundred orphans gathered around the grounds of what used to be  _Lecter Dvaras_ , their _sanctuary_  with mama and father, where their  **fundamental** warmth had driven away all things _dark_  and  _gloomy_. Now only an absence inside himself resides and the fear instills within him. His fingers are intertwined along with Hannibal, who is about an inch smaller and two shades lighter than his own tanned flesh; his  **bibliomaniac**  brother had buried behind books and sketchpads, while he rummaged through the dense woods, scampering about like an excited dog until the vehement tree barks instantly dispersed, their edges overlapped with flutter of agitation.  _Exhausted_  and  _beat_ , he’d fall into a sound slumber until dinner time came. Hannibal would draw him and sometimes he’d hear a distinctive scratching sound of pencil on paper.

Now, his blood boils as his heart surges and beats with such intensity and the  **sublime enormity**  of his own heart is evident through pulsing blood of the vessel and he could almost feel Hannibal’s too. When the fear manifests into constant beatings and  _maltreatment_  from the caretakers as well as more bigger kids, Nigel had put up a determined fight. He couldn’t even blame Hannibal for going entirely mute with all the  **amalgamation**  of fear and trauma from Mischa’s and their parents’ abrupt and untimely death. 

Everything seemed to spiral downward as the young twins had been caught in an _inescapable vortex_. It was as if the roofs of the building was crumpling overhead with nowhere to run. They only had each other’s vehement presence to relieve themselves from livid contusions and dribbles of blood which continuously marred Nigel’s flesh. Hannibal put up a  _considerable opposition;_  he wasn’t going to be like a sitting duck upon the **barrage of assaults** , like a dazzling multitudes of rays through a faint curtain, but never tranquil and serene. It raided upon the twins like blitzkrieg.

Words fail to reach him as his lips twitch. One more fucking  _curse_  and the baculine discipline would reign down upon Nigel again. With deep sense of dread, his body thuds against the hardwood floor, with a streak of blood escaping in dribbles as his virulent gaze lands towards the bully. All of a sudden, Hannibal lifts his intense maroon from the book back up to the unnamed bully - through constricted breath, as if a ball of fire had been lodged within his airway, he pummels the bigger boy along with Nigel, until the crimson river runs down his jaw, along the line of his throat as he drowns in his own fucking blood. The last  _powerful_ , **decisive**  blow sends a spray of blood erupting from his open gash and he falls flat to his face,  _lifeless_ ,  _dead_.

The reality hits them like a harsh smack of light and before Nigel even registers his eyelids tremor in the face of the  **manifestation**  of his imagination, they’re running and sprinting away, with their hands clutched against each other in the same fashion. Minute spasms travel down to the muscles in their cheeks. They’re not completely  _unscathed_  as their shared blood trickles down their voluptuous lips.

**No** , they wouldn’t be amerced by this  _retaliation_  and they will be always together. Through their sparkling innocence acting as a duplicity behind the rippling motion of colossal wave of  _abhorrence_  and venomous gaze towards whoever causes harm. A  **mass rally**  of jabs and punches as they meet with silent  _congregation_. The night of their first triumph over what seemed to be unconquerable; _their first kill together._


	34. Chapter 34

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hc + family

In the winter cold, where all that is  _merry_  and  _bright_  and the plain-fields of white radiate with such incomparable  **decadent glory.**  Each and every year as the moon falls slightly lower on the horizon, a wonderful turn of events take place. Lecter children delight as this swiftly tilting planet shed flakes of crumbling clouds of grey upon their heads like dusted ash from the fireplace, but much more  _atmospheric_  and  _expansive_. There wouldn’t be no need for aimless worries, dreaming of a life cast in the rose-colored hues of afternoons as  **crystal granules** bounced blinding illuminations that would not only lighten his darkened hazel, but warm through the chilled bones and marrows. 

With arms draped and fingers clutched upon each others, the trio remains  _frolic_  and  _cheery_ , despite the agglomerating chilling rush invading them further and further like pinpricks, into their overcoats and wool hats. Warmth would remain an  **elusive** ,  **rare**  thing, yet the bed of warmth grows like their  **covenant** ; no matter what takes, they would make a home out of each other. For hands can hold each other’s respectable heart (but Nigel  _did not know_ ; that they could also  **break**  it). Withstanding the test of time as their loyalty would remain, along with  _sustainability_. 

_Could he hide from the world for a while? Could he crawl beneath the blankets and rest his hand in the hands of a ravaging karma? May he crawl inside its soul and turn it into his home?_ How it shattered them both when reality comes to reclaim the twins and when it does, how he breaks besides his twin with  **no barrier** offered. 

* * *

_Tonight_ , the moon is at its peak; full and bright, yet Nigel’s mind swirls with thoughts of where he’s standing in  **paradise** , despite his bones cracking, but still growing by carrying his own darkened version of the world. The indigo sky glows radiantly in its own right, but his gaze is held with the silvery glint of the drawn blade. He’s  _freezing_  or  _flaming_ , leading him to mule over everything that electrifies underneath his skin. It must be the day that Mischa had been taken away from them - and  _tonight_ , their shared, cramped bed remains  **empty**  and the ceiling makes him claustrophobic. The barred windows are not big and high enough for his desires to jump over. 

How his lungs contract with each drag he takes, his ribs bleeding with thoughts of them, reunited and Hannibal and he, getting by each day like  **two broken records**. His feelings are never buried beneath the sand, despite his valiant effort. They  _creep_  and  _spill_  through small fissures and  _insinuate_  their way into the surface again. And he remains in  **dissonance** ; distanced beneath the burning tan lines of his and Hannibal’s as he imagines. 

He would rather prefer to be melodramatically DYING than to live like a specter, of SMOKE. His mental state all burning bridges from here. As he deconstructs and remains disintegrated in-between breaths and in the pulsating atmosphere that bleeds nothingness. And his headspace remains as a void; a temporary space, the pulse between breaths, the post-emotional-drain exhaust as he collapses beneath the deceptively lulling calmness of the night. Motionless, immobile. Heavy eyelids in sleepy body as he effortlessly slips into the nothingness. 

##  Yet, forlorn grey of  **ash**  and  **soot** , the gnawing flames digging through his gullet and eating away at his  **viscera**  will awaken him from such fitful sleep. 

 

 


	35. Chapter 35

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> headcanon drabble prompt: apricity: (n.) the warmth of the sun in the winter

He finds a lulling solace again between the spaces of seconds’ calm. Beneath the  **written rhythm**  of the air’s frequency resonating with the _shifting glory_ of the Lithuanian morning. The landscape remains folded over and under a crease of mountainous snow, and how the **howling rush of endless white,**  bellowing through the harrowing night had finally turned into a gentle whisper as a black blanket of white remains a clump of a mold. His skin can’t feel itself, for he might as well already turned into a fossil.  **With his presence blurred; indistinct**. He’s just a  **smudged shape** of Hannibal’s unfinished drawing, done by a still-relatively untrained hand.  _All outline; no details._

He misses the fire and the earth; not of the gnawing cracks of firewood and the ashen charcoal soot of gray against the dry, merciless air, but of the rich, **aromatic agglomeration** of radiant heat, with its moisture-laden sweep that would lick over the contour of his developing bones and muscles. Such heavy nostalgia of the gentle summer takes him beyond his deep dream; where acres beyond acres of green lush lands, where magic felt **real**. And the birds singing their afternoon songs, harmonizing with the cicadas, as the deer danced with one another to the soothing melodies drifting through the  **verdancy**  of the spectacle unfolded. He would stretch his limbs as the glaring sun would stare at him down from his place high in the sky. Yet, such  _companionship_  had been the one of most loyal. 

How he long for those that were forcibly taken away from him,  _ripped_  right from the earthly home with such  **brutality** , with his most fragile of parts exposed for all to see. Instead of a generated warmth from woodsy fragrance of pine and depth of sandalwood permeated to signify his once-beautiful home, a drab concrete walls, on the verge of chipping and crumbling against the drab concrete jungle of Bucharest remains like an exposed wire of a building on the brink of demolition. And he lies, slumped deep and immobile, stripped off his strength in all that is fair in love and war. Except, he never had the upper hand as it becomes an ongoing pain.

****He had witnessed it all, through the deceivingly indestructible carapace of Hannibal’s human veil; within that _lucid evil_ , lied a **peculiar purity**. The steady, slowed beating heart of a highly metabolic being. Through his lingering life on the verge of death, Nigel perceives what his aloof, impassive twin spill forth - not only through the whoosh of blood along with his own frantic heart and slipping vigor of well-maintained physique, but the  **manifestation**  of his sentiment crumbling down as well. If he had breathed his last upon the ground floor of his club, his fucking concocted world upon all things  _sensual_  and  _scurrilous_ , would Hannibal ever consume him to make his younger, reckless twin be a permanent part of him? 

The colors have been changed and as he lets all of his weapons lain beneath his feet and forgets how he feels to boil the burns that are beneath his skin, layered and soldered from all of the damage he never knew how to mend, he finds his gaze gravitate towards the  _fanned sunray_ , focusing into a steady line penetrating through his window. How **portent paroxysm** takes over, as he once had witnessed beneath the cocoon of Hannibal and Mischa’s warmth. The  **phosphorescence**  of the potent image’s radiance making him languid and utterly RELAXED beyond measure. 

There’s kissing, there’s leaning in, thall the same biting frigidness would elicit the  **conflagration**  over his skin, yet such beauty of  _reminiscent memory_ overrides the misery of scorching, the slow burning grooves of his conscious as very conflagration douses. And such  _darkness, depression, sadness_  of winter leads to become a **healing balm** upon his immortal wounds. 


	36. Chapter 36

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nigel and Hannibal both are gravely injured.

His body is such a treacherous thing; as his own hard and roughened fingertips clasp around the crumbling temple; reducing to be more like an illusion, such intransient thing of  **entropy**. With each threaded suture holding him in whole, the perforated holes widen and pull together with such  _elasticity_  and each sensation AGGLOMERATES into a wave breaking on the rocks and he feels packed into the wall opposite him, where he can’t tell he’s  _hallucinating_  or having a frantic fit of  _hysteria_. 

While the blood still seem to hemorrhage out of his body, the festering rot was running rampant upon the strained strands of his muscles. Such blanket of warmth that had been his fundamental fuel now suffocates him in  **anarchical uncertainty** as skin pores widened like craters, the itch he couldn’t scratch digging beneath down to his muscles, aggregating there to latch their tenacious grip upon the expanding stretch. They are reruns of  **exhaustive dreams** of their shared past, all  _broken_  but never  **forgotten**. Beneath the blue ink as he chokes upon the emptiness, the rush of lonesome morning serenade hit him like the bleeding orange red of fizzing shades of the sun. Maybe all he ever wanted was a mirror, for Hannibal reflects the same radiance of the bleeding sunset as stench of INADEQUACY oozes. The pain is deliberate and out of it would come something beautiful, new and different, yet he doubts that he would live through it.  

He feels as if he’s being skinned alive as his epidermal swelters and endless ulcers form to drown him in a white, viscous, watery discharge. Upon the vanishing form turning into ghost of impressions, he watches crimson stream flow and leave marks of fading petals upon the earth, equally barren and sun-baked. As he watch a manifestation of vehement shadow consume him whole as he floats upon the air like inactive memory, too  _violent_  and  _brutal_  to be agitated and extracted out of him and he watches the atom, at the very core of his experience that shaped him disintegrate into the dust as he suffocates. The burned soot and ash chars his outline as the mere ectoplasm of himself gets dragged into the otherworld as he burns like an ALIT MATCH overflow as his body withers beneath it. 

Every fiber of him embeds with splinters and fibers of regret, serving as both the luminous glow and his own plunge, as nerves engrave with her name as he had taken a dive into the dead of night. He could feel the clumped fibers of his muscles swell and expand, with flaws and uneven layers of pigmented layers, becoming  _clashing_  and  _dissociative_. Always letting his fiery spillage of emotion always get best of him. His own canvas made up of more unfinished, slapdash of choppy strokes along with exposed raw canvas, to his decalcomanie counterpart’s refined, more  _grandeur_  PROJECTION of the world had been formulated without a single trace of visible paintbrush stroke. He attempts to peer through the radiance of reverberating streetlights overhead and he feels Hannibal’s lips, more precisely, the  **virulency** etching through his own lips, too close as pain tattoos and pierces. Trying to reach _beyond_  his twin’s deep maroon in such disassemblance, time becomes dust and scatters. 

“Don’t deny the fucking blazing fire within your heart as you dismiss the fucking chaos riddled with bones and streaks of  _nostalgia_. Sometimes it takes both  **inspiration**  and fucking  **desperation** , not only to cause calamity, but to face the onslaught that presents upon your form. Killing and dying both are  **necessary** , you wouldn’t fucking register the potency of that emblem, the pouring crimson soaking through my raw skeleton.”  _Forceful_  and  _deadly_ , yet they tinge with EFFORT as words themselves become etching bolts of thunder upon the narrow corridor as he seethes in  _contempt_  and  _disdain_. Enraptured in perplexity of disturbance as plump lips thin.


	37. Chapter 37

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEADCANON: Nigel's Injury

He lies in bed, mind now awake, but his eyes remain still closed with the rest of his body asleep. Most of the time, he’s  **outside**  his body, looking for ways to climb back in-between the spaces of his ribs, where the  _metaphorical heart_ lives and he cannot see anything that isn’t physical. The  _black hole_  of his mind expands, whatever he touches and brings upon contact are either destroyed or lost forever.  _But she came_ , she that who possesses this **tranchant way** of looking through his eyes, the windows of his soul that he drowns in the OCEAN OF HERS every time. He feels something HEAVY and metallic in his palm with a piercing pain of something cold and hard digging through his finger. A knife; and his frantic mind goes haywire and he’s reminded of the VERY NIGHT he had met his sure demise. 

How the pavement came alive as he fell into a  _trance_ , the rain in his mind a  **default** ; as if everyone in the city should be cleansed and resurgent into a different being. One by one, the droplets hit the asphalt and the dimmed streetlights would refract against the precipitation. How he briskly breezed in silence as more glints of starlight streamed directly into his pupils, like a meteor shower on a clear night. But it wasn’t clear nor he’s not clean; he still watches the world pass him by a  _blur_ , like his vision has sunk even further, which is another reason why he’s no longer  **peaceful**. Every phantasm of  _unceasing wind_ , of Gabi’s intransient presence still persists in solidity. How his devoted mind dies with  **unrealized triumph** ; like consuming fire and gunpowder.  


He’s in the rawness of a dream that doesn’t much make sense; the walls are melting, but HER face remains the most  **captivating**  thing in the room nonetheless. It’s like loving; surreal and sweet and not at all dangerous, but HIS life creeps into  **promises**  and  **mantras**  of prayers and his ears become deaf, eyes blind with the fraying edges of time. So too are the love he spreads a galaxy upon her chest, seeking another  _adventure_ , another  _journey_  upon his already expansive footwork. 

Only tangible touch is  _lived_ , and then he comes  **crashing back**  inside his body to collide upon the anvil of his chestplate, akin to white hot pain in a burnt finger that touches a hot stove lid. How his heady heart pace through two full lungs rapidly at work, with the moment that never failing to fade, leaving him to claw back out of his body. A feeling close to  _enraged_ seeps into his feral, rabid gaze, unrelenting, immovable, desperate to tear back his skin if it means escape. Until he’s outside of his body again, looking for new ways to climb back in; even if this is meant to be his downfall; the  **circular excursion** \- wandering in velvet dreams, wading through the pinpricks of his sensitive flesh. 

Even when Nigel feels like an empty shell with a former glory attached behind his name as the most effective hitman and a kingpin there was in the business, such  _inquietudine_ **vulnerability** brings forth a  **whirling vortex**  of resounding hurricane within him, as his vehement hazel is the only screaming thing that oozes defiance. Fighting the fuzzy haziness streaking within his view as he accompanies the reverberations of his cranky silence, the continuous strands booms loudly in his ears. He could’ve danced along with the blazing fire, as all the  **cornucopia**  of stimuli reminds of only her and  _turbulence_  will conquer all the thoughts of her.

He’s not his rugged self at his core, furnace fire is a voice inside his head telling him to remain highly intuitive - not overly  _empathetic_ , yet highly  **aware**  of his surroundings and his mind processes. In his line of work, trust comes with too steep a price; as much as he gave much effort to deny him from being bruised both inside and outside, he had often been knocked off his feet in both  _surprise_  and  _confusion_ , as he either didn’t care a fiddlestick or trusted too much with his  **life on the line**. How often he had felt the sandstrom blasting over his face, each grain corroding and chafing against his skin, leaving  **permanent wound**.

Like a  _progressive_   **concussion** , it’s only thing that makes him to regret. His persistent trust having been ricocheted as they reach right into his soul and rip it out of him. The catastrophic recollections of him and them; the story of his life. They are capable of doing it, because they know just where to reach. Once he makes a landfall, he weakens significantly. His residual chaos and violence could only burn through him for so long.  **Beastly insanity** , perhaps. How one’s identity had been caught at the edge and pulled at the seams.   


Words were already spoken; through loose threads, tangled in the thorns as he lets all that remains to fall - yet there’s  **distinctive rebellion**  that ravages through his mind and it’s hard for him to quell it. For a while, there’s an  _uncomfortable silence_ , only to be perturbed by intermittent rise of the smoke’s unfurling and his own idle gaze following it engulf the world, in comparison to his dramatic fury inside his head. 

_What if he’d destroy and devour himself and see hollowed out corpses that the earth would savor and replenish?_  He’d simply and  **nonchalantly**  go about his life like reckless fool he ever had been. And he would let himself bask beneath the placid lake, white river, trees of a million shades of green, the sun breaking through canopies of leaves, tail feathers of blue and red and green and yellow as his eyes would dart and scan through the rocks placed just so by the tides of time and place. And there is no humans; not a single one, NO Hannibal, NO MISCHA. And the memories fade and vanish like  **pencil’s strokes**  treading across the paper _corrodes_  beneath the sands of time as he drifts away once again beneath the  **tsunami**  of brushing memories.    


	38. Chapter 38

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Concatenation: My Hannibal's headcanon.

The  **windowpanes**  echo Mischa’s name, reminding him of the dark blue the way she left him. When he sowed her against the fertile soil that was his expansive mine, never had he expected the karmic intervention to steal her beauty, her life to be tossed it away like  **scum**. And that had painted his expansive world with grayness for days, entrapped in  _autumn silence_ as clouds shifted through shadows and mists of his mindscape, illuminating  **once-empty fields** beneath the perturbed solace of mourning sadness. She remains only in his dreams; as a blissful mirage. Still, she exists OUT OF HIS REACH, for the sands of time have been unkind.

Her foundation had been cracked and worn, despite with her unmarred, porcelain skin with floating golden hair, with a dress akin to a white shawl trailing behind in the wind. He rebuilds her from the wreckage of gnawed bones and scattered pit of ashes and soot over and over. How she becomes a colosseum held together by sticks and stones and bandages.

And of the things he lets blow away last winter. His gaze  _tinges_  with the frost of the chill, conveying both  **frailty**  and  **adamant mercilessness**. He was frail back then and no promises could have kept him there. He found himself full of wanderlust and a want for escape from the cold, following the deer trails through the forest until his lips would threaten to bleed and he couldn’t use her name in a sentence without saying “ _was_ ” right after.

_She WAS his sister. She WAS his charge, despite her being not his offspring. Such flawless thing that had been taken and it remains the blazing fire that ignites his bones with unparalleled passion and diligence. For she had been lain across hot coal for men who have paid no heed nor gratitude. And no amount of rivers of shed tears that had vanished into the quicksand of his absolute silence, his misery unbeknown to the weary travellers of the world would become understandable beneath the armor, thinned over time, hiding his monstrous intent._

When he was younger, he never understood it when people talked about  **lost loves** , loves that could have been, but  _never_  came to be. He  **never**  understood it.  **Never**. Probably because he had always been a firm believer that if two people are meant to be together, then somewhere somehow, they will be together. The duration of such  _naivety_  cut profoundly short despite him doing whatever it takes, because that’s what love does to a person; making the impossibility somehow possible. How he had let himself to be deceived upon such knowing deception, despite never understanding conflicted emotions.

His obsession with control could be the vanity that would close the gap between him and the graves;  **homesick and fading** , as poignant eyes would trail the familiar stark outline of the _Lecter Dvaras_ , tugged besides verdant pine forest, atop a  **high precipice**  looming over an expansive lake below. So he should become a wolf with bounded agenda; maroon eyes without dilation. All the boiled burns suppressed beneath the geniality of a pedantic scholar. A LIVING GOD layered underneath his skin from all of the damage he never knew how to mend surfacing through the sophistry of his words.

HANNIBAL LECTER is an unprecedented man surpassing of ages and definitive concepts.


	39. Chapter 39

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Headcanon Prompt: JOY

He cannot give enough and even his absolute 100% seems like a  **deprivation**. The  _haunting indentation_  of the ring he wore ever so briefly reminds him of that,  _despite_  ceasing to seem **strange**. Its  _absence_  remains a constant reminder of what was cut out of his life, bit by bit, along with his consciousness and sanity. How he cradles tangibility with camouflage; feigning  _joyfulness, contentedness_ , with each passing dusk’s disappearance transpiring, the poison seeping, pooling around his ribs. 

Yet, he doesn’t beg for affection nor pretends the summer rain would chase and purify all the agglomerated sadness, the wilderness of his weight. Blue would soon fade into midnight and death had been like water - like the  _paradox_  of his  **rebirth**  - painting a bleeding sunrise inside his mother, settling like **cobalt ash**  raining onto his shoulders. Unearthing blue beneath the breathed life of red. The shadowed, fraying corporeality of his held beneath the harnessed love of music; hurtling away the karmic death sentence. 

**The scar remains** , still there and afflicting pain nonetheless having been healed. He’s extremely careful to not scratch deeper than the surface, for he fears the  _archives_  of his mind to go all haywire. It’s all the little snippets of memories he will keep; like lighting a match one by one, treasuring its  **pendulously swaying**   **bud of flame**  within his caress, within the warmth of his palm. Yet, playing with matches is dangerous; for he’s willing to burn to crisp beneath the pained silence of torture. 

For the diminishing consciousness and the most thickest haziness, akin to the distant horizon merging upon the vast expanse of unfathomable sky beneath the dense fog, had lifted with the benevolence of an angel. The  **pendent miasma**  seeping within the ambiance along with the  _deafening palpitation_  serving as a warning signal roots his slender legs in place, while he would spend every strength conjured to wrap himself in a cocoon of joy and laughter. 

Through the thickening odor of his sticky sweat and sultry trail of blood turning into a steady current, he drowns out the commotion; a stampede upon the dance floor, full of rising tide as the hoofbeats seem to rattle his weakened vessel. He could feel the corner of his eyes flutter as he regards the wobbling figure within a  **targetable**   **distance**. If he was going down for sure, he wasn’t the only one who’s gonna crash.  


Gabi remains his false idol, the shadow beneath the hands of the sinner as he raises his hand, stretched abyss concocting a decisive blaze. All the darkness and sorrow should not break through the façade of happiness, a glimmering wave as aeons of memories flood - the veneer of tears flow freely and he would fall into the arms of love as apparition clarifies with coped pain. 


	40. Chapter 40

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> meta topic; hot beverages

It was that endless void of time that only comes into  **existence** when something happens so suddenly, his mind isn’t remotely capable of comprehending. That’s when he knows he’s truly living; with the smell of rain after a  **thunderstorm** ; the  _petrichor_  seeping into the shades of pavements when it’s autumn. The harvest season and the unspoken competition to pick the most flawless leaf, never-mediocre colors of  **midnights** and the color of the  **sunsets** , bleeding into the depth of his hazel as the frosty breeze of the fast-approaching winter bristles over the sculpted feature of his. 

The mangled pendulum of temperature change is such a peculiarity in late September, yet a bundle of warmth persists, marking the coming of the starry night. The gentle billow of the steamy cup nestled within the growing palm seeps his heart content. And he realizes his wish had been fulfilled by the very star that beckoned the wish.  

For he is  **fire** , and  **light** , and  **ash** and  **embers**. He finds himself at peace with  _bathing radiance_ of numerous shades and all the oceans in his mind remain completely still. There still are depths he hadn’t quite explored and his mind may become tangled and wired with **restlessness** , yet he remains  _contemplative_ within the whirling cycle of the gnawing flame. The potency of cinnamon stick with a bare hint of wine inside the large mug, reminiscent of thick, lush hot chocolate he used to drink back in the Lithuanian home. 

Most often, he does not have to seek such warmth, the poignancy of what remains so much more than a memory. And the image reflects upon the frosted windows, and he stands perplexed in the reflected image, a contouring blur of Bucharest landscape unfolded beneath the twinkle of barely visible stars. How  **celestial** becomes  _resplendent_ among the galaxies of nightscape as loneliness persists. The absence of people who really understood you; the gazes of his blood and flesh that would share stories from back even before their eyes clashed; barefoot and frolic,  _smiling_ ,  _swaying_ **in tandem**  with the dancing fire tucked beneath the chimney. 

How such **flood of memories**  rob him of wealth of OTHER experiences. All the knowing memories of consequences, should his past diverge and scatter from his present, where no warmth of homely atmosphere lingers and the walls conform as artificial barriers against all of his afflictions. The  **unchecked emotion**  causes his healed scar to  _twitch_ ,  _ripple_ beneath the frayed muscle strands underneath his lean torso. 


	41. Chapter 41

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Meta on LIFE.

Here’s the strange thing about life that holds truth for his fucking love: your heart can get **obliterated** into pieces and then one day, someone walks into your life who makes you feel like the  _bomb_  never even went off in the first place. Even if he cried an ocean, even if he set the  **entire fucking universe on**   **fire** , even if he bled himself dry to the bones, even if he feels _hollow_ and  _empty_ , he will find a glimmer of hope beneath the dimming spark of his war-defeated body, throbbing as it had been wounded over and over again. 

If such  _effervescence_  had the power to raise him up, to make him feel lighter than air, it also has a power to make him fall, for him to  _subjugate_  beneath the  **leaden weight** that’s heavier than the mountains. 

Even in his **cosmic loneliness,**  in the moment of  _despair_ , it will save him. For he lives like fierce waves that could topple a boat, a thunderstorm full of grey clouds waiting to pour any minute, hanging so loud that one would feel the humid and cold air trickle their skin like _invisible_   _droplets_. Yet, he would still look graceful as those waves would glide over the ocean top beneath the  **rusted sun** ; on and on to the same  _rhythm_  even when the gale has subsided.

And there they are,  _finally_ , overcoming the karmic separation as he would wrap his arm around her, devour her lips like he was tasting them for the first time. Against all odds, for **miracles happen** ; she had been tarried with a star - so _high up_  and  _unreachable_  - and he remains as an  **earth-bound dreamer**  that’s waiting for that pulse of light in the midst of the dark to fall. 

And he’s entirely and delectably perplexed, caught by her enchanting luminance. As he steadily gaze upon her, she’d blink and his own hazel radiance will contain the constellations of HER lucid depth of blue-grey all the more. He wishes she would fall, so that he could wish upon the skies; that if she’d ever fall, it would be HIM who’d catch her. 

His mended heart sails across the moonbeam with the thoughts of her as his  **final destination**. For he continues to dig his graves empty-handed with nothing, but a heart on his sleeve and a  **flaring, detonating blaze**   **of spectacle** painting upon his intensified glare. Her light had been left along with the dusty starlight of his ashes. And he basks in an afterglow with  **dilated pupils**  -  _mesmerized_  at the bathing luminance that rained on the twilight of his thoughts. 

Maybe it was the lingering, offset scent of DEATH that keeps him  _preoccupied_  - that continues to hold his mind in a  **castle of air,**  floating in anti-gravity - until he never had noticed a part of his soul fast fading away. All the scattered fragments like stars that shines perpetually in his darkest night flashes blindingly into the supernovas he knew and saw on the first recollection of such sensation, stimuli that would etch themselves into the bone arena of his skull. 

How those twinkling lights clashed violently, yet now, as they pray farewell with no words uttered for each other, the gravity between them is nowhere to be found. The only  _reckoning_ for him is an ABYSS, a **black hole** of clouded indistinguishable visions that grasp and descend him further into insanity. The words engraved in the  **tombstones of this path**  would rather let him plunge into the fallout and put this heart to FOREVER rest in the graveyard of **stellar memories**. 

AS HE ALREADY ONCE HAD. 


	42. Chapter 42

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nigel's DEATH

**The void;**  it loves him at his  _highest_ , but it loves him even more at his  _lowest_  - its hunger had devoured everything he had left, it continues to break what’s already shattered down to  **minuscule atoms**  and tells him that he will never love like he had before; he will always be  **alone** , he will end his life  **alone** ;  _feeling_   _cold and insignificant_. He breaths the ruination from the wildfire, the damnation of not knowing how to breathe. For he both is the tinder and fire; he would BURN and burn, until there’s nothing left, he would be gone and his fundamental essence would spread to the next. 

How the previous life and the current one intertwines with his messy hair and messy thoughts. And despite having swallowed the pain like a pill prescribed for pain, Gabi Ibanescu remains his **absolute** , his  **eternal**  kind of wish, so does the perished life of Mischa Lecter and the existence of his only flesh and blood. For Mischa may now rest in his bones and his silence will never be mistaken for innocence. There’s no between the lines; nothing would remain beneath the hovering veil of simplicity, because his path isn’t always so clear and lain out in front him like unfolded universe.  

And his extinguished life would  **imitate the craft of his art**  beneath the flaring barrel, with its thundering barrage of cacophonous menace. Beneath the ruptured sky, he would remain a refuge in verdant field beneath the bleeding moon, recalling the same forest’s edge as his escape heightened the scent of his perfume. No more  _abysmal emptiness_ , being stuck in useless thoughts as pine, spruce, ether, silence that continue to fissure his soul. How  _brittle_ , _rigid_  and  _blue_  he had grown, like  **fragile peace of ice**  cracking beneath the weight of the thousand specters. 

People say that death is always painless, but the process  _isn’t_ , the part after -  _silence_ , he doesn’t know how to be himself without her laughter filling up his sky. As once upon a time when he met her, forever young they were, forever young they will always be. Like a **fountain** that never sleeps, but he’s more like a  **firefly**  searching for the ectoplasm of billowing smoke, spreading from his thinking. It would become a  **wildfire** , for she will be his perpetual kerosene, enough fuel to last for a lifetime and over and over. 

He would blanket the stratosphere with  _complacency_  and a dense haze and the downpour would pound against the bone arena of his expansive skull;  **intersecting**  and  **interweaving**  with one another in directions that cannot be grasped. Such diversion would exacerbate scarlet bleeding from limbs, as he would drench beneath the midnight blue with the expressive profile of peculiarity, with vanquished memories and vermillion daydreams. 

Oh, how he loved and lived like scattered leaves in  **windswept fields** ; revolving, spinning, slipping, out of fucking control. 


	43. Chapter 43

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ kiss ] your muse kisses mine

He could be in **total ruin** ; without hope, devoid of emotion -  _broken_ , completely. Being moments away from losing his whole fucking shit. Yet, he still has the strength to turn around and smile, despite having faced the most  **distressing affliction**  of having a sentimental heart and a skeptical mind.  **Vulnerability**  etched his bloodshot hazel, creating another layer of dimension upon his painted heed of the scars. How they become magnified, his HEART OF HEARTS cut, abandoned, yet loved without conditions. 

In  _ruthlessness_ , Hannibal paints him to be the  **undying beast t** hat he dives under the covers from. All become a matter of  _perception,_ as mortality paints him; death might be the cure, yet a rendering of a recuperating man feels natural beneath him. Cool and smooth, contoured to a sculptor’s fingertips. 

He’s solid, Hannibal’s much more brimmed with virility of a carmine flame. Warmth and breaths coalesce and unspoken language had become solid; stiff and hard as his battle symphony melds effortlessly against the probing lips. His elder twin takes him up to the corporeality of delirium without adulterating almost all of his senses -  **beyond compare** as his lips taste of the rusted blood, flowing freely upon the contours of his forehead. 

There’s no backing away, as he shows such  _indignant_   **outrage**  and  **fury** towards the vanished death. He would NOT submit to dark and nothingness - for this is where he belongs. In calm recklessness that dashes across his veins with an unwavering presence. 


	44. Chapter 44

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are places where people eat their dead.

The door to much-abandoned and neglected Lecter Dvaras is covered in nooses; pinned with primroses, violets and the likes. It takes forever to get inside, for the subconsciousness of Nigel Lecter’s labyrinthine mind supersedes the tangibility of tangled vines and bushes blocking his way. The familiarity of midnight strikes and he’s still just trying to get to the fucking lock, past the timeless engraving of heraldic symbol of wisdom, cunning and mystery coils around his spine. It must be his transformation; reverting time when he had been a thirteen-year-old boy walking out of the amalgamation of his home, his catalyst, his eternal pain embedded within the crevices of rusted gates and granite. 

He would, along with his brother, “ _walk to and fro on the earth_ ” and be imperially slim (both qualities of Satan). In the account of  **Genesis,**  Satan is said to have appeared in the form of a serpent. So the snake would represent not only the CUNNING and power of the Visconti. a highborn Italian family name which their mother bares, but also, would contain the double meaning of referring to Nigel and Hannibal Lecter’s own power and cunning. Such **resurgence** , IMPLEMENTED change exemplified by their status of apex predators.   


No horrible and pretty things would keep him away, though his key is rusted over. He had been in a drought for many years now - for he embodies the  **rusted darkness** of EARTH RED, which dusts over his  _entirety_. And Mischa’s essence - becomes his  _fucking noose_ disguised as  **blossoming flowers** dusts his hand and pulverizes onto the ground. The unbearable ennui sets in; as the true economy of the world had been instilled like preinstalled software - predator and prey. If ever the world were to run out of prey, the economy would _collapse_. 

He had risen above those flocks of preys and found his stock of would-be victims to perish beneath the flick of his fingers. The  **menagerie**  would swell under the iron-rule of his loyalty, the club his hunting ground. Yet, Nigel Lecter wasn’t entirely free of such  **sublimity**  of the old estate. The external carapace of his hardened self is full of  _murkiness_ , where the tall weeds and creeping vines adhere, along with the  **eternal shadows**  that would cling onto his form and become one. He’s not quite a marionette beneath the strings of the past; yet it’s tattooed all over his body and his mouth is filled with such potent scent of funereal pyre. 

The LOVELESSNESS exemplified with  _gnawing_ ,  _undying flame_  and such paradox of rich scent emitting, cutting through the sharp gelid winter. It’s  **putrid** , it poisons him and he cannot BREATHE. His glued mouth remains a perfume bottle, a perfect vessel for its containment. How it continues to plagiarize and project across the dark landscape of his mind, yet he would still remain IMMOVABLE. 

Lest he perishes in the unforgiving and unyielding  **snowstorm** , he would NEVER step into where all of his history began, where  **wicked violence**  and  **bloodlust**  had became the BLUEPRINT of his DNA. 


	45. Chapter 45

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a jarring event, something that changed their life/outlook.

He’s  **inhaling** , but the air does not reach the chamber of his lungs. He’s  **gasping**. Gasping for any bit of air that he can find, the world has alotted for him to take. He needs to BREATHE - but he CAN’T. His chest is tight and the need to vent out prolongs, and his viscera contorts and distorts, bile surfacing against the back of his gullet, stomach lining in knots. He swallows back tears as his resilient stubbornness refuses to show any signs of weakness. 

He is being swallowed by a  **void** , a secret between his splayed limbs and torso tells the idle nonfiction, away from the  _glorious_ , delirious  **delirium**  of his usual  _precarious subconscious_. There are cracks between the cage of his ribs, collapsing as if he had been suffocating. There are no  **bullies**  present, nor  **attackers**. His home feels like falling through a never ending, pitch-black abyss, because NOWHERE feels like home and he remains either a harbinger of DEATH or an incarnate of fire and fury, spending majority of his time beneath the intoxicated toxicity of virulent ire. 

He does not go  _red_  nor  _rigid_ ; he is as pliable and ghost-like beneath the  **infernal image**  of Mischa; where **sinful dwells**. A place he knows all too well. For every ounce of his being tangles in the unspoken words and unreeled thoughts; the raison d’être of his entire self falling inadequate beneath the  **verticality**  of stark pines that cut open down along his sternum. How his pulsing throat WITHDRAWS,  _accepts_  as his warm abdomen pulls everything out, his entirety held beneath the gaze of  **desolation**. 

Such PALPABLE warmth coats, the sensation of suffocation immediately  _mitigated_  by the promise of a quick solution in the form of his adaptable  **wickedness**. His recklessness had yielded such spectacle of crimson and ivory, his  **unseasoned**  first kill. 


	46. Chapter 46

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a meeting or relationship that was important to them (twins, obviously).

He still remembers perfectly clearly the image right outside his side of the window; the cramped bed where Hannibal’s steady  **coalescing**  of warmth and breath warm against the valley of his barely covered back. In the  _overlap_  between the  **networks of limbs**  (of theirs), there was also the same  _network_  of two oak trees; and he perceives an empty shape of sky, which appeared at some angles  **cervine**  and at others  **equine**. The nights became clearer and clearer, beneath the unperturbed silence beneath the familiar ceiling. Sometimes he would see it leap and bound around the edges of his  **unconscious** , just before letting the threading grasp of attentiveness go. Its night blue body of SPECTERS  **emblazoned**  with the haunting, half-shut eye of the moon turning into the familiar gaze. 

Akin to  _candles_   _aglow_ , scattering of rose petals and a bottle of bubbles. Incessant  **bubbles** and  **unbearable heat** slow dancing upon the atmosphere as his weary gaze would remain entirely TRANSFIXED. Cold fingers, on the verge of being severed beneath the unrelenting streak of howling wind, with the same cold toes but with warm hearts and stomachs. Letting their noses touch as they embrace under the candlelit sky. The light would travel SO FAR OUT, for so long, until they would find enough  **substance** ,  **subsistence**  to their threatened life.  

He finds the same lack of substance in his voice, deteriorating as all that he believes in becomes naught beneath the pitch-black. How at the tender age of ten, he had grown to be such an expertise in sullenness and sorrow, anger and infuriation and nothing else. He’s not of a childish creature of the lost highway, nor a contented kid full of hopes and dreams; he should find himself beneath the arms of his brother’s, but the sense of dysphoria is a fucking bitch to shrug off and let it scatter like ashes. 

_Was he supposed to wear **this fucking**   **art**  on his skin? Was he supposed to look at his body like a  **fucking work of art**  as opposed to the failure he sees it as now? _

The tattoo he already wears carves further into his skin. Maybe its constitution, its meaning will change his perception of the world. Through the smoke-stained glass in a sort of haze, befitting a horror scene of a cabin in the woods. No such fiction was needed, for he wears the boiling heat beneath the cracked armor. He will remain himself; different, unique, dark, proud; HIMSELF. 

Long, slender fingers  **release, retract, repeat**. Everything happens so quickly; as he entangles himself in emotion as he lets his mind and his heart run wild and rampant. Wicked poetry runs through his fingertips at the touch of familiar cold metal of the trigger - as he suddenly finds himself LEANING against the _familiar rush_  of the heartbeat next to him. 

He ACHES the same way; yet he knows for sure, he won’t have to fight the battles alone. The privilege of  **discovering** ,  **overwhelming**  and seeking  **triumph**  HAD been his existentialism, his MANIFESTED REALITY. 


	47. Chapter 47

**rules** : your muse has just died. They just dropped dead. As they were dying, they thought of these five things: at least they had ______. 

 

1\. I’d rather be  **crushed** by the deep, dark sea, as I fucking turn to dust that floats on the water’s surface. Living above the _fiery forge_ of verdant, vertical forest with my  _furnace flames_ licking over the surface of the horizon. My  **conflagration** will burn,  _beyond_ the expectant longevity.   


2\. I wonder if that luminous frozen cadence of the singing moon is a manifestation of Mischa’s voice, lulling me into a fucking  **submission**. And I wouldn’t entirely mind that from happening. My slipping awareness will regard her brilliance, her struck-down light. 

3\. I’m so fucking close enough to  **memories** themselves to taste the sparks through shivering skin, cheeks still flushed with blood as my neck sinks into my collarbones, with dry knuckles rubbing and pulling against the unforgiving hardness. It is I, who fucking set the tone for magic, tone for vibrancy or its lack of. 

4\. How  _our_ presence had been struck a match full of our  **incendiary selves** , Despite lacking some compassionate glue for our severed existence. Without  _blinding_ **innocence** , but utterly wrecked with  **loathing degredation** as we persisted, survived and conquered. No shredded pages and saddened regret will mar our minds, for we rose over like a phoenix, with undying fervor of a roaring fire. 

5.  **And I think of you**  - with a thousand unasked questions and a thousand unsung memories. Things I could’ve done and things I never had all the fucking voice to speak. Yet, no ghosts of moments play on repeat, for I have given my all, with  **no almosts** , not any things **undone**. They may remain  _repressed_ within the vena cava of my heart, yet I’ve never been very good at taming CHAOS. 


	48. Chapter 48

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HC + sickness

The bright light from the cacophonous hubbub penetrates into his still-sleepy eyes and he groans in discontent. It’s 4:12am and it’s a holiday, so it doesn’t matter that he slept in and over. The phone on the nightstand vibrates and he disregards any **external stimuli** entirely, as he rolls deeper into the familiar warmth and the scent of the bed. Pulling the covers over his face  _nonchalantly_ to protect it from the shining nightlight, but it’s too late now. 

He’s completely  **awake** , so he draws all of his strength together and attempt to sit up. He’s not necessarily  _angry_ , but he’s just a little grumpy about the fact that he’s got to leave the universe of sleep and face the day way too earlier than he had anticipated. The unfamiliarity of gravelly sensation presses up against the base of his throat as lodged phlegm causes it to **constrict** , along with the sharp valley of creases to form among the bridge of his nose. 

His heart quakes for a split moment, for a lost ache that his head has blocked out in self-preservation. It isn’t quite an  _outwardly sob_ , yet he could feel the large, past-filled and salty cries of his lungs recalling and recognizing the **past-reflection**. And his heart is trying to offer him some kind of raw tenderness, but to him, it’s just _unsolicited tears_. Just a heartache for a rainy day.

While his atoms are gracefully expanding and growing into existence with energy coursing through him, the  **tangled vividness**  shatters his defiance as a large palm rubs over his dry face and entangled tussle of his grown mane. Warmth of his flesh against the cold of the milieu, as the unseen stars tells him the story of his existence. The meaning of single celestial objects to entire constellations as he once gazed them up in  **hope** , with full of  **vigor**. 

_How would he describe its vast library? Its juxtaposed affections?_  It becomes so  **intrinsic** to his character that his commitment takes on a form; simultaneously  **comforting** and  **tragic** at the same time. Maybe they’re the same, infinitely  _replenishable_ , yet somewhat  _unreplaceable;_ just like the unspoken rendezvous of this momeent when the life’s obstacle has dissipated and melted away, temporarily against the inner **battle-worn temple**  of his body at the youngest. 

Feelings are  _inevitable_ , for he cannot control them when he starts having it. He has never been afraid of the dark and unknown, yet he does of silence.  **An absolute silence** , something _indismissible_ without a sound. While it could be regarded as the quiet and stable form of sound to others, when something makes him  _helpless_ because it’s something he cannot grasp in his senses, thereby making him  **vulnerable** and more  **open** without his permission. 

And the shallow ponds of his hazel idly gazes in the distance, leaving him dreaming. Breatheless, in  **nostalgic memory**  as even the night itself remains out of reach, ephemeral against his peripheral. His hoarse throat sinks further into the worn mattress as the vice around his cranium tightens further. Before the content of the story  _corrupts_ further with the **persisting undulations** of dull throb, his eyes screw shut before he lets the distant thunder lull him away to fitful sleep. 


	49. Chapter 49

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Propagated Variations of his Fire and Love

He paints love like  **paint** ; coloring the dullest of the worlds with ecstasy and wonder and illusion. The monotony of his routine overshadowing by such  **brilliance** of his love. His thoughts tinted blue by the color of her eyes as he claws his way out of the black hole, bruises and scars covering every inch of him. Every sharing of  _struggle_ and  _suffering_ unveiled his vulnerability for genuine connection, not behind a  **walled encasing**  that is his body, but strongly sensed on the outside for those who sought to understand.

How Gabi’s tending drew a certain significance as it animated, his eyes closed with a stretched grin, a constant  _exhilaration_ and  _exhalations_ of pleasant sound; sweet and silken, gushing giggles pressed against the back of his throat. Each corner of his mouth shifted in tandem to paint an inverse arch,  **an unstrung bow** , a smile. As capable as he could ever be of paralysis, numbed of pain for as long as she curved her own.

And beyond their connection and sparking nerves and essences, revealed each strand depicting their own stories, a  **transformation** from darkness to light and vice versa of progression, a journey up his life and down her life. How their hearts become jettisoned away to some other place; a distant city, maybe a field or a forest at the _razor edge_ , where everything that cuts so deeply with each helix of his fingertips and mirroring gaze.

* * *

Silly how momentary happiness can lead to a long-terem pain and silly how he becomes so sharply aware of its impermanence, but still grasp on the instance in hopes for it to last long enough and erase the thought that maybe this  **rain of fire** , this _perpetual state_  of his would beee gone. His bones will be liberated from leaden weight and the ashes falling like snow will be lifted from storms of his  **sadness** that devour his conscious and affection.

Conclusively, he’d be lost in the dawn of sunrise, with too much love sheltering him, but the temperament for his nature; all the constant  **supplemented pain**  of needles piercing as he’d scream in helpless misery for someething to sustain his body. Claws grapple at his  **viscera** , threatening to  _collapse_ in on theemselves as he holds no taste, only **grinding teeth**  and forcing the substance down his throat. 

Beneath the weathered weight, the blind sunlit prisms replacee the phantom riptides of Gabi’s preesence, into walls perpetually painted with uncertainty. And fulminating rain shatters windowpanes, as it harbors  _reflections_ of his clouded rain as a tainted pistol grip loosens. 

And then he’s be  **gone** , erased from this world forever. 


	50. Chapter 50

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Treacherous Rivers, Dangerous Rivers

The manifesting skull of an **unidentifiable animal** glares at him, the withered roses behind it grinning;  _taunting_ , a colorful example in black and white as wilted petals fall like scattered ashes -  _an inevitable signification of death_. The monochromatic dreams of his glowing beneath tiny screen behind his still-closed lids, as  **booming thunder**  of his wrath fester and gnaw with bittereness. The only color is what runs in the veins of the creatures living in every _shadow_ , every _imprinted letter_  and every  _corner_. How it all drips down their cracked maws;  **red, red, red**.

He keeps telling himself that his heart is much more louder than his brain, because his self-preservation through exerted  **addiction of violence**  is easier to be treated as ‘ _unexplored potential._ ’ It’s easier to say ‘ _he could be_ ’ than ‘ _he is not_.’ And it’s so easy to spin himself like thread, to sew his lips into a Devil’s smile; as a  _shadowy hurricane_ sweeps him up and leaves nothing, but debris. How his corporeality manifests like a **demonic presence** , his soul washing his body of all feeling. 

**The power of his finger**  as his greatest treasure as vituperation only grows in intensity. There’s often a  _dual movement_  within him; even as he succumbs to the other person’s power and unbreakable strength, he would bolster his own  **fortification** , as jolt of strength infiltrating this body exploding with splintered reflections of shards of glass. How maddening could he get, as he silently sinks in the deep red sea, cycle after cycle, the threads of his heart stretching infinity as his tousled mahogany tresses scatter about in the remnant of ash, blown with a flutter of exhale. 

The world may break him at both ends and he will withstand time and time again with courage and strength. _Wasn’t that what survival constituted as?_  What it means. Pain itself may be beautiful, yet his life always wins over him rendered into a **pale mess of a creature** , through into his petrifying, dried-out heart. How he steals kisses from the midnight air, as if it had been his  **life-sustaining provision**. 

His heart remains a galloping stallion, obstinate to be contained as its hooves strike the ground with its  **zealous fervor**. He held his breath, his diaphanous hazel eyes turning like a set of laser beams, only to be mirrored back through his own savage reflection. His own clutch at mortality wavers like a  _torchlight_ , as his own existence and presence upon the world had been **tumbling descent** , flaming in the mist as a small flame continues its exhaustive dance along the suffocating moisture. 

He’s the wounded tiger shark looming over the dark, another is his formidable prey he couldn’t managed to kill, the same breed capable of snap and tear him in half. Soon, the manic waves would cast shadow over the escaped, as the riptide of his  **vitriol ire** would sever all the expectations and looming spectacle of complicated  _manipulation_ , as the illusion of struck-finger would reminesce such provocative positioning; the bruising of knees, then into a  **wondrous spectacle**  of viscera, crimson, blasted gray matter painting the prophecy through mud and rain and stagnant lake. 


	51. Chapter 51

1.  **Certain strands of memories become a lie;**  granting him such an impassive look like an arrow flying and piercing right into his chest.  _Horrid memories_  and _fickle dreams_  are like that, as the cavern of his wound lets out trickling blood, as the poison on it courses down into his bloodstream to make storms. 

**Demons** and  **monsters** are born in the midst of unrealized dreams as the wild rampancy of his mind fails to be rendered into the quantum solace of the immovable night.

2.  **How his colors paint the sky;**  swirling patterns of rouge and yellow, glazing akin to wings of the migrating birds flying by. His gaze may  _temporarily_ carry the  **softened breeze** , but such demolished beauty, gentle grace and embedded ease soon dissipate beneath the fueling zest of  _vibrant captivity_  of his  **rudimental fire**. 

The supernova of his mind, a catastrophe waiting to happen as he becomes a manifestation of  _trouble_  and  _sadness_ entwined and residing in one swelling chamber of his heart.

3.  **He has been long dead;** long overshadowed by his loneliness that joy would have an exceptionally difficult time recognizing his existence. Like everyone else, he has moments where he breaks down; moments when he’s not quite himself - he may be  _here_ , but he’s **gone**. All the  **stellar magnificence**  of him already broken and rotted to  _vanish_ into the sole darkness. It may cause him despair, as he’d see widening  **chasms** and  **gaps** in his life that still longs for such life. 

_A sinner_ like him has no right, yet she remains his  **salvation** , despite all the wrong forks on the road. And he continues to trudge through this impoverished land where he remains oppressed beneath the burdensome weight of his past and wounds  _twisting_ and  _breached_ upon with all the spilled salt and fire of his  **crude, rotten existence**. 

4.  _How is it possible that one so endowed can love someone wiith nothing, but darkness in his soul?_   **She will be end of him, as he is to her.** His madness, his fear - he knows all of them too well, too intimately - as he’d feel deeper into the night, without  _freedom_ and  _becoming_ as he drifts through the night, with a drought of twilight embedded in the  **desideratum** of unfurling brushstrokes.  

And it’s silence, stillness like  **violence** and he cannot wrap his hands around the world; it’s much, much too late, as everything  _suffocates_ him. 


	52. Chapter 52

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Tangibility of Self-Control as Scar Tissue

 

While Hannibal’s **obssession with control**  could be mistaken as  _neurotic_ (abnormally sensitive and obssessive, but without being tense or anxious) to those who has no idea of his traumatic experience from childhood, he’s hardly a person to hunker away from seemingly lack of it. Yes, he is  _meticulous_ and  _impeccable_ in what he puts in his body and come across as who has  **zero**   **empathy** ; respectfully and confidently with everyone, whom he believes would never see through the human veil he puts out, that is force to be reckoned with if one isn’t careful and observant enough. 

Yet, those with enough psychological background would know that he is on the **high empathy spectrum** , with brimming emotions (as much as Nigel exemplifies with lack of vocalizations). Hannibal simply perceives such touchy temperament as being contagious and like bllood that stains anything and everything, it has penchant to overstimulate him with strong emotions, which threatens to overtake him, thus going back to his  _aversion_ with loss of control, and while he has experimented with administering himself with opiates and alcohol (the key world being ‘ _alone_ ,’ with only him as a spectator), he is immaculately on top of things and does not go beyond what his body cannot tolerate. Nigel’s more of a guy with a reckless, devil-may-care attitude. **Carpe fucking Diem**. 

And Hannibal absolutely refuses to let his corporeallity threatened with agitation and violence morphing him, because he does not kill for pleasure nor simple animalistic bloodlust; his method is extremely  **ritualistic** and  **nothing lacks reason and theatricality.**  Despite him being absolutely intolerable with rudeness, he is far from being his temper meddle with his kill itself and would not go for an overkill. It does not mean that his method would be instantaneous and painless. Nigel prefers to utilize as little force as possible, unless he’s overbrimming with influx of jealousy and hatred (most of his kills are clean, headshot through and through in point-blank range). Hannibal’s is theatrical and he does not shy away from letting the victim’s pain echo in waves, as he likes to harvest while victim is still breathing, on the verge of fading and diminishing into unconsciousness; he likes to rob power and submit them into  **absolute powerlessness** , instead of Nigel making his respective victims to feel their  _inadaquacy_ , of their lack of power. 

_Because even God is a man who cannot be trusted,_  Hannibal’s  **god-complex**  fails remarkably, because the vault of his mind is full of unanswered prayers. And he must always carry the mind of a killer and a predator, to get rid of the parasite in his mind; his guilt and him ‘ _being_ ’ what he is as of now in a ritualistic consumption. Unlike Nigel, who  _undoubtedly and willingly_ gets into the ‘ _delirium_ ’ of  **lost control,**  of its  _unpredictability_ ,  _mayhem_ , even risking his  **mortality** to sink his head beneath the tumultuous chaos that resemble his surging bloodstream, Hannibal refuses to let go of an ounce of  **unwilling control**  (why the construction of his mind palace is extremely pivotal even threatened with  _indignity_ ).


	53. Chapter 53

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Memories are never the same; for each time one is recalled, something has  _changed_ , something  **added** , something  **removed** … The same memory that brought him tears can bring him happiness, as memories  _mutate_ with time, with  **emotion** , with  **narration** ; he does not place trust in his heart, because that tells him he should never, ever seek the  **tangibility** and **physicality** of home. The unchangeable facts are what relents him  _nonetheless_ to let the diminishing ounce of hope to blossom in his mind, to let unfurl to escape the  **forest edge** and flow along these brazen fields. 

_But how could he ever let himself fade away? How could he let the universe rob him of his humanity?_ **Violent** in thought and as vast as the oceans that swallowed nations and moved continents. It all stems from those  **austere** and _earthly-toned_ , almost  _baroque-looking_ confines of Lecter Dvaras, as his  **hope** and the sense of  **self-preservation** blossomed since when his lithe limbs could grasp and climb barks of the tree, and let the  _verticality_ of approaching expanse consume him wholly. 

He would suffer the  **pain** when he ever fell and move on, no matter how many bruises blossomed once more in the sunlight of the future and no matter how his  **rampant imagination** told him to otherwise  _conquer_ and  _seek_ unexplored  **vastness** that hasn’t registered behind the smoldering intensitty of his gaze. It had been once his unending joy, his cool breeze on a hot midsummer night, the one ray of light piercing through the blackest cold. 

Now, he’s learning damn hard to find those things within himself, looking among the wreckage of him with a flashlight, like rescue workers after a hurricane shouting the name of someone lost. He’d look for the scattered and buried parts of him, and perhaps he’d hear his own scream from underneath the collapsed house that once held him. And he’d witness his own reflection, covered in scars with a smile on his face. But all he sees is the  **unfolded mayhem** , a series of deafening, booming fireballs turning into  _pandemonious firestorms_ , with all the fury of gunpowder disarray. 

And his days of  _fury_ and  _grace_ continues in abscent hours, as familiar blanket of snow overtakes midnight and the rattled confines of his cranium. 

 

 


	54. Chapter 54

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Would a hug from Hannibal make Nigel smile? Even if it is an awkward one- Also hey, what do you think of the fact that Hannibal eats rude people but his brother is the rudest he has ever met- Wow, actually what does Nigel really think of older Hannibal? His thoughts on human flesh? Does he, like Hannibal, think it is the finest meat on Earth? How far do you think Nigel would go to protect Hannibal or would he at all?

His heart is empty, yet remains  _fulfilled_ ; with a prophecy of  **unredeemed silence**  as the nature of his love - _always fading like a sunset, twilight engulfing turbulence_  - as his days are left quietly, out on display with his  **brooding** ,  **amorphous** heart. It may be left to drain, with all the saddened, dishonored truth that slices the chambers with jagged, serrated edges, yet he still breaths with impermanence, despite wanting to be weightless. 

He may be confined beneath a weakened vessel, with the  **hollow bones** ; and at the center, his spirit rattles with  _thunderous resonations_. His inside, his heart, his core, heeding the call and running away with all the vestiges of intrepid spirit that won’t  _succumb_ nor  _fast_ and _fade away_. All the love may have been drained as his corporeality remains to be chiseled in stone, and despite the  **lingering limerence** of his exuding gaze may still yearn for the smeared cherry warmth of her lips and her bosom pressed up against his chest in unification, he knows better. Lecter are MEANT to succumb beneath the universality of love, with their bodies swathed in light, two respectfully powerful and dominant men capable of being captured in moments of their gentle, tender humanity, despite his mind saying otherwise. 

It’s not quite a full-blossomed smile that reaches the peak of his cheekbones and eyes, yet such  **acknowledgement** perks his spirits, as his spine  _recedes_ and  _leans_ ever so slightly into the molds of the familiar musculature. And he’s comfortably in the place, where he’s allowed to feel a brink of vulnerability, where he’s able to say, _look, this is me, this is you - this is every fucking thing that love should be_. Despite it becoming harder to grasp beneath all the hurt and exsanguinating pain. 

* * *

He’s unapologetically raw and honest, without a glimpse of a veneer that his brother wears so effortlessly. With all the  **smoldering flame** contouring through the  **malleable steel** of his frame;  _ever-changing_  and  _unpredictable_ , despite his headstrong, set ways of causing upheaval and deafening limbo beneath the flick of his index and gravelly baritone. The ink stains of his eyes take everything in - as his gaze penetrates the atmosphere with both gentility and potency of the smoke rings as they stack into it. How the crooked curve of his smile mirrors the edge of his fingertip against the armchair, where he comfortably leans; teeth setting, the heated brood of his hazel eyes deepening as his head imperceptibly cocks. 

“Cannibalism is the most fucking  _dominance_ one can exert over such  **undeserving, undeemed** individuals, while I may have partaken in it -  _unwillingly_ when I had been absolutely powerless - such  **decision** is not my own to partake,” he’d rather put himself to become such a  **fear-invoking beast**  that he’d cause a jolt of panic, elicited by a flash of a memory of being hurt, being handled such a savage manner that he’d retaliate with the _wildfire_ of his own. He does not want to taint his burning self with further butane on his skin, simply because he views them  **intransic** ,  **impermanent**. Most of them are not worth his time, nor such  _theatricality_ to transcend them into a  _fucking fine dining_.   


“We may have barricated ourselves with our respective  _walls_ ,  _fabrications_ ,  _veils_ , whatever the fuck you’d call them, but we are, still fucking  **capable** of being swayed in the flourescent light of  **love** and  **obssession** , all the fucking vices of what our carnal desires possess - for such is a  _human nature_  to ever be tempted back to these jagged rocks of emotions and gravitations towards them - yet I cannot say the same that I share such  **propensity** for human meat. I intend to  _kill_ them and let them  **rot** and grow  **putriscent** beneath my trampling feet.”   


As the mother nature has intended, in a **vicious cycle** of being  _consumed_ and ravenously _devouring_ through the crimson, bordering black sea. 

* * *

And should Hannibal may crumble, as the wind bites and threatens to tear off his face, as his comforting embrace soon conflagrates into trembling beginning of a wildfire beneath the deadened, cold gaze of his, becoming jabbing icicles against the thickening black ambiance of a desolate room. He may be  _stranded_ ,  _captivated_ by **frightful beauty** of the shared blood, erupting like magmatic liquid flame against his palm as the fastening cadence drains his sanity. 

Such **infernal wrath** grips him firmly, as his blood sings with his frigid brillance as he stands. All the ugly mosaics of his bloodied hand becomes a catalyst for his overbrimming  _intrepidity_ , as knuckles tremor and whiten, as glimpse of fear recedes back with how the way the roots intertwine, gripping everything together as he disappears into the  **darkness** , of the  **unknown**.

_No creature of beastly intent will succumb without the elevated splendor of carrying the weight of the conquered._


	55. Chapter 55

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ♦ - HOARD - something that is precious to them (Hannibal)

Some nights, he looks up at the stars and wonder if they were created only to be gazed upon by lovers, separated in the  **unfathomable expanse**  of the night. He tries valiantly to search for a guiding light, to take him back home, but in matters of Hannibal Lecter’s heart, it is difficult for him to be crystal-clear. Even his  _conscious_ is confused by what’s attractive.  _How can he measure up to such mental image, when everything becomes a contrast, a countermeasure reality to an envisioned idealism?_

Maybe his standards are  **unreasonable** to qualify and he’d already made a bed which none can occupy. Despite the proverbial box existing for a reason as he remains painfully alone beneath it - lest Nigel’s existence crashes into his peripheral like a  _tidal wave_ , and his twin’s own form could take a dualistic form;  **harsh** and  **blinding** in the darkness of the storm in his mind, or it could very well serve as a  **lighthouse** if he wanted him to. 

His intentions were never to hurt and harm Nigel, yet Hannibal sees he has carved Nigel hollow. No doubt, indecision and deja vu rings true, as his numbness adds oxygen and further fuel to the younger twin’s fire. How Nigel  _explodes_ and  _justifiably so_ , and the ringing in his ears wouldn’t subside as he deliriously retracts  _further_ into the depth of his own  **anger** and **hurt**. He is capable of writing out all the pure emotion and raw feelings, yet no fiery tongue nor flames lick these ink-stained pages of his sketchpad. 

May the intermittent crosshatching of his pencil fuel his idealism, unrealized, as it sits heavily as guilt on his conscious. Perhaps it’s why he couldn’t ever let go. It was knowing he was even capable of letting that side show, as his moral compass would continuously tick, as it becomes so  _twisted_ that he’s clawing for solid ground in the ashes to explain who he became in his unconscious. Though his  **lack of strength**  and  **perserverance** in a form of a ten-year-old boy is nothing when he’d faced with such **gruesome savagery**  and such ravenous, grafting hunger that had brought such  _unthinkable_ , yet  _inevitable_ conclusion. 

There’s something  _wicked_ in the way his breath slows down, retracts from all the carnage, spectacle of crimson and sanguine. It is really like the sun or the wind or the rain, stretching and expanding the sharp coldness that singe his equally prominent cheeks as they tear him apart so beautifully. He’d  _fall_ and  _bleed_ all the same (just as Nigel’s corporeality does right before him), be destroyed to the bone as he’d rebuild and heal himself to build upon that **hollow, gnawing hunger** that would eventually yearn for his  _change_ , his  _transformation_.  

* * *

And as he consumes Enrikas Dortlich’s cheeks, he feels everything; the air on his cheek, the birds in the trees, the inconsequential murmur of voices echoing as the decibel intensifies into the deafening song. In his mind, a mere blut of muted radio static as Mischa’s favorite tunes obsess his  _subconscious_. He thinks it means  **peace; home**. **Free; home**. 

He thinks it means all the  _restlessness_ finally being stilled. He knows how to awaken the feeling of home, as it simply arrives when it wants to - through his soul, tethered to bare earth and teeth as his  **gravitas** grounds him down. The pull of  _its gravity_ lands him in sunken quicksands as he becomes **the Fallen**. 


	56. Chapter 56

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hannibal's old memory, from childhood perhaps

Something is  _screaming_ within the brewing core of his mind, with his **disused throat**  raw and bloody. As if his wrist had been pinned down by foreseen, yet much forceful and stronger force than his own in midair, a **soothingly deceptive**  voice amends. “ _I’m never going to hurt you again._ ” 

Hannibal knows better, for he half  _hates_ how things change, yet he  _loves_ the  **unknown** ; he will fret over nothing, but  **illusions** , they are harmless in conception, but painful in conclusion as deep-rooted trauma  _ignites_ and  _delights_ him with burning love. Chaos beaming through his thoughts, making his ephemeral peace of present and making him distraught. Or is it reason that treasons his afflicted heart? A theft from his true self meaning to keep him from eroding apart in the broken record of the rewinding tape. How the sky of his subconscious switches slides, the black-blue bruise illuminating further by fireflies of Mischa’s remains buzzing around in space, with numerous, greedy hearts hovering over the Lecter children as obsidian dark of their eyes gauged their plumpness. 

He brews strong storms as he’d become the **rarest pearl**  in the deepest trench, yet the _imitation_ of his mind still remains flawed, not quite forged in fire, despite it being his birthright. His heart full of  **ember** and retaliatory vengeance brimming with sorrow and regret shapes hollowness, carved into haunted shapes in his heart from every breath of hope diminished and long gone. How the ventricles of his heart gapes maw,  **insatiable** for hurt and hunt as he drinks his tears, a flood within  _constricted_ ,  _petrified_ mind of his, still  **fervently alive**  through every wound as he’d be strangled and burned alive;  _frozen_ and filled with  _fear_. 

Wanting to regurgitate a laugh, wanting to drown his own shouts, the boyish figure of his remain trapped in  **isolation** by disembodied forces. Air cold and unchallengable, bound to never grow out of his ideals as they’re smashed into splinters and turn to dust. Yet he has no choice to dig through the ashes, try to find even a **tiny spark**  to cause the remnants of nonexisting ashes and dust into a new flame that will warm the most  **deadened heart**  and send the blood rushing wildly through the body as he’d learn to forgive himself. 

Everything, must be the process of  **forgiving himself**  and the process of  **betterment** , despite cold freezing his thoughts and causing him to be rendered useless below an _ice-coated world_. Cruel intent shapes and connects on the surface, as darkness bleeds through  **depthless streams** of his maroon. Deep down, they continue to tear apart his dreams, yet he can taste the metallic blood, the stain Hannibal will never wash out as he’d attend the garden of  **trenchant chisel** , with all the lush theatricality of his elaborate schemes. 


	57. Chapter 57

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Something that is precious to Hannibal.

Some nights, he looks up at the stars and wonder if they were created only to be gazed upon by lovers, separated in the  **unfathomable expanse**  of the night. He tries valiantly to search for a guiding light, to take him back home, but in matters of Hannibal Lecter’s heart, it is difficult for him to be crystal-clear. Even his  _conscious_ is confused by what’s attractive.  _How can he measure up to such mental image, when everything becomes a contrast, a countermeasure reality to an envisioned idealism?_

Maybe his standards are  **unreasonable** to qualify and he’d already made a bed which none can occupy. Despite the proverbial box existing for a reason as he remains painfully alone beneath it - lest Nigel’s existence crashes into his peripheral like a  _tidal wave_ , and his twin’s own form could take a dualistic form;  **harsh** and  **blinding** in the darkness of the storm in his mind, or it could very well serve as a  **lighthouse** if he wanted him to. 

His intentions were never to hurt and harm Nigel, yet Hannibal sees he has carved Nigel hollow. No doubt, indecision and deja vu rings true, as his numbness adds oxygen and further fuel to the younger twin’s fire. How Nigel  _explodes_ and  _justifiably so_ , and the ringing in his ears wouldn’t subside as he deliriously retracts  _further_ into the depth of his own  **anger** and **hurt**. He is capable of writing out all the pure emotion and raw feelings, yet no fiery tongue nor flames lick these ink-stained pages of his sketchpad. 

May the intermittent crosshatching of his pencil fuel his idealism, unrealized, as it sits heavily as guilt on his conscious. Perhaps it’s why he couldn’t ever let go. It was knowing he was even capable of letting that side show, as his moral compass would continuously tick, as it becomes so  _twisted_ that he’s clawing for solid ground in the ashes to explain who he became in his unconscious. Though his  **lack of strength**  and  **perserverance** in a form of a ten-year-old boy is nothing when he’d faced with such **gruesome savagery**  and such ravenous, grafting hunger that had brought such  _unthinkable_ , yet  _inevitable_ conclusion. 

There’s something  _wicked_ in the way his breath slows down, retracts from all the carnage, spectacle of crimson and sanguine. It is really like the sun or the wind or the rain, stretching and expanding the sharp coldness that singe his equally prominent cheeks as they tear him apart so beautifully. He’d  _fall_ and  _bleed_ all the same (just as Nigel’s corporeality does right before him), be destroyed to the bone as he’d rebuild and heal himself to build upon that **hollow, gnawing hunger** that would eventually yearn for his  _change_ , his  _transformation_.  

* * *

And as he consumes Enrikas Dortlich’s cheeks, he feels everything; the air on his cheek, the birds in the trees, the inconsequential murmur of voices echoing as the decibel intensifies into the deafening song. In his mind, a mere blut of muted radio static as Mischa’s favorite tunes obsess his  _subconscious_. He thinks it means  **peace; home**. **Free; home**. 

He thinks it means all the  _restlessness_ finally being stilled. He knows how to awaken the feeling of home, as it simply arrives when it wants to - through his soul, tethered to bare earth and teeth as his  **gravitas** grounds him down. The pull of  _its gravity_ lands him in sunken quicksands as he becomes **the Fallen**. 


	58. Chapter 58

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a difficult or miserable time in their life (kid!nigel verse) - in Hannibal's POV

The sunlight dances through the trees in an  **exuberant tribute**  to Monet and van Gogh; perhaps, it could constitute the same way as it falls not-so-gently against Hannibal’s face. In his slow wake, he casts a shadow that sets its steady pace against the light; and how his _complexion_ becomes  **harsh-lined** and  **defiant** \- as he stands absent in that _pool of iridescence_. 

Both in his presence and nonexistence, the  **blossoming livid bruise** beneath his sunken eye darkens a few shades darker as such _dangerous, destructive, insidious_ idea feeds upon the vault of his growing memory. His archive divided by single events, taking over the expanse of the  **orphanage** as his long gaze lingers upon his brother. He more than knows that there are forces; inside and outside, that push and pull, absorb and let go, a **cosmic ocean**  that causes him to drown. 

While the idea of causing death blossoms in his  _unconscious_ and  _subconscious_ world, perpetrated by those seemingly in power. And among all the  **mundane mediocrity**  of the life bulwalked by the confines of the walls, he finds  _transcendental peace_ in the ear-splitting clash of heads, **fiery, untamed fury**  that would cause anyone to burn beneath a frightening blaze, never warmth. Perhaps The Beast would be what would become of Nigel; as firecrackers fling across the horizon of their oppressed universe. And Hannibal’s own one remains covered in a **blanket of obsidian**  and the  **moon** becomes his bedside lamp. 

How explicitly easy for Nigel to be  _manipulated_ beneath bellicose and warlike gaze of the bullies, and everything turn into a  **construct of hatred** annd  **repulsion** as he’d watch his twin crumble and collapse in a crushing defeat. Yet, now, they remain beneath the tranquil solace, lest it may be gone in a snap with the daybreak. Nigel’s sleeping figure remain  _tranquil_ , with facial features smoothed and chest rising and falling in a steady rhythm. 

And he remains awake in a  **milieu of warzone** , refusing to be grasped beneath the slipping weakness as he’d scream Mischa’s name until his throat becomes parched than the desert. He’d take this abysmal blanket with a storm in his mind, rather than letting him become a victim in a sea full of sharks. And beneath this  _transient serenity_ , everything, the stretching horizon of his confinement and beyond what exists in the visibility of his senses - the **dark threshold** of crosshatched strokes define the indolence of the night, of death and mourning. 

All the  **raging, scornful of war**  within him heightens through his ever-still heart thrums with the prospect of  _gore_ and  _glory_ embedded beneath the quiet command of graphite strokes. The sharp point of the pencil splinters, as the boundary between Nigel’s shoulders and the edge of windowpane, where he yearns to be; but still, makes him to swallow the  **adverse effect** of gravity as he remains beneath the definition of a  **degree of loneliness** he had set upon himself. 

There is no pain nor shedding further blood, but he remains lost in the realms of memory; the **faint expressions**  of the visual world is his  _hope_ , braiding wiith  **desperation**. 


	59. Chapter 59

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nigel's reaction to Hannibal's kiss.

Evening remains imbued in rippling curls of late autumn breeze, as the lanterns of the night continues to be  _quiet_ and  _nightswept_. A  **strange comfort** sinks below skin, to his **bloodstreams** , to this  _blaring engine of his being_  or this thcket of veins; perhaps he had been once again lost by the  **grandeur** of the Lecter Dvaras, but the expanse much more smaller and compact. The  **familiarity** is still there, yet remains  _unlocked_ beneath his breath and all of his past - _their past_ \- winters wriggling up, yawning through the repression of their choreographed lives. 

Never had he thought he’d be locked in this  _position_ , his expression confused with his furrowed brows and pursed lips - up until he becomes  **utterly lost** in the realms of memory; with all the faint expressions of the visual world coming alive as once  _desperation_ becoomes hopeful  **elation**. And how the warmth of Hannibal’s lips break the silence of the  **stagnant water** , the dampness that fills his lungs as he could taste the rain crowd his throat. The violent clashing waves of his former life rendered in gentle wakes as his own trespass elicits and erupts such unpredictable reaction. The sharp-cut of his suit clings to his flesh, as he looks more washed ashore, like a sailor torn from the helm,  _floating_ and  _basking_ in the  **night’s untamed beauty**  with disheveled complexion with glassy hazel. 

Perhaps everything could be defined as  _intricate swirls_  of  **incomprehensible desire** , as the warmth ascends. Each impression of warmth turning into a dance across his senses, each gentle bits capturing more of his tainted heart. Beneath the welled-up congromerating emotions lodged in his throat, he becomes the epitome of silent wonder and marvelous disguise; the Hannibal Lecter he had known in the orphanage does not exist. Beneath the _coalescing breaths_ turning thunder like  **chariots** , he urges and persists on, as if blood runs down his mouth as the  **razor-sharp teeth**  catches his twin’s lower lip. With his passing finger tangled against the silk tie. 

**Erosion** , that’s all he tastes as his gesticulation suggests something  _more_ , but it’s unclear what as he continues to melt beneath the constantly changing colors; the elation of warmth, clashing with the  **pitiful lack of color** after life in Bucharest. All he could register is his mind filled with grey growing ablaze with colored rays as the forbidden dance continues. 


	60. Chapter 60

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nigel's (unsent) confession to Hannibal.

**H,**  Memories are like the fucking  **weather report** , speaking of cloudy, dark skies with scattered thunderstorms and air suited for crispy, chilly fall. How all the hues of grey paints the most beautiful way like  _artwork_ , and I’m always reminded that the sky is nothing more than the chameleon constantly changing its colors to suit its needs, not of the  _world_ , but of all the **fucking intents,** fucking  **hellbent**  on knowing what would become of us. 

Each droplet of emotions becoming  _distinguishable_ between confused droplets of rain turning into flakes of snow. They are as fickle and volatily malleable like the  **silence** , like the fucking **violence** that crows my throat and fills my lungs. Those days remind me of our  **youth** ; and the fact that the  _silence_ in this fucking glum stagnant water of my memory does not retract easily. 

Perhaps it was  _never_ meant to be erased; as my humanity was meant to  **rot in the trenches** of the war,  _evil_ poisoning camps of my already  **putrescent** corpses. And even I’m graced with snippets of hope or peace or kindness or even love, those things don’t fucking last forever, despite their empty, vague promise of eternal. There’s only  _hate_ and  _desperation_ and  _pain_ and **death**. I’m sure you’re fucking familiar with all of those as well, you’re a  **Lecter** , you should know these things by  _heart_. 

The rays of the sun were always more  **notable** , more  **defined** and  **quotable**. And even seemingly gentle and graceful, they are misconstrued, always definitively taken as crashing, thrashing, unpredictible and unforgiving. I do not deserve these fucking things; no peace and glory now exists in my untamed beauty, stripped raw and grown beastly, almost inhuman. 

Perhaps somehow, these things could be reversed, but I do not think I want to dive head-first to the only option we have as of now. It’s fucking  _difficult_ and  _time-consuming,_  I’d rather face fucking  **death** once again to step into abandoned grounds and corridors of what constitutes **austere hopelessness**.  _Especially_ not when I’m still fucking inadvertently fucking hopeless myself. 

I think it was meant to become the  **epitome of silent wonder**  and it has become something of a grave portent of my  _becoming_ , without  **antidote** , without  **reverse**  and most important of all,  **without judgment**.  


	61. Chapter 61

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> something Hannibal Lecter thought he'd left in the past, returned.

There is a cut in his arm so deep, that when came the day Mischa left him behind with so much  **agony** it caused, he would be  _bombarded_ with all the pangs of guilt, of the **broken promises**  they had made. He lost her in a vision that was brought on by a fever and the wallpaper of his mind remains still covered in markings, in mockery of his defenselessness and helplessness bleeding onto the floor. And he recalls peering into the gaping holes of severed veins, vessels with no  _conscious_ and  _conscience_ as the monster lurking all along on the other side claimed and almost  **encrusted** his fate. Such spectacle of carnage is an irresistible addiction, his indellible ink against the blank canvas, as his penmanship developing further with accumulative kills, as he rewrites himself with a brand new name. 

He would take more than a dozen of those similar, even worse cuts now and brush them off as if nothing with no regrets, yet here at the end of it all, he still stands  _alone_ , still  **undefeated** , with the triumph that she has given him; a  **bleeding heart**  and a cut in his arm that  _freeflows_ , yet still able to grow  **septic**. 

Emotions do not reign him over nor he’d ever let himself succumbed beneath too much of it, yet he finds all the  **heartache** , the  **isolation** and the  **loneliness** that creeps inside him throwing him to the landfill. How Mischa’s intangible presence  _enumerates_ his capabilities and schemes glamorous theatricality, 

Beneath the unperturbable exterior, the  _unharmonious beating_ of his chest ricochets louder than ever against his temples. And it’s exactly as how vigor thudding in his very cells and he will acquiesce such memory.  **For time is a slippery thing;**  lose hold of it once and its string might sail out of his hands forever. He wades in the shallows of the  _iciness_ of his thoughts, ever fluid and clear as water, as the sting of his salt numbs all the right parts of his brain. And as he swallows and resists the  **looming bloodlust** threatening to float towards him, the familiarity of red pouring hot out of the victims, of his imperfected ruthless kill of a savage fledgeling runs hot into the pit of his gut. 

He cannot help, but feeling his soul  _writhe_ and  _tighten_ whenever he’s presented with  **epidemic of rudeness** , as he forcibly faces this new reality that had been suppressed beneath the deep vault of his own one. Once his muscles are clenched into  **irreversible fists** with harbored ravaging wrath, as all the viridescent hues of abandoned grounds of Lecter Dvaras exposes him as the shadow beneath the static stillness of the night. And the Devil’s claw  _unhinges_ to break through the spinal columns as gleaming bones expose as  **molten iron**  of sanguine erupts against the glint of his  _surgical precision_ , hugging hipbones and cleaving through the thorax. 


	62. Chapter 62

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hannibal finding Nigel drenched in blood after they killed someone (Nigel's POV).

The dribbling blood covering floor of the earth becomes some ongoing stream, as night fades further into  **infinity**. How his rubicund features grow rosy pink beneath the moon’s blueish light as scars remain deep-seeded and on the verge of ripping open.  ****If he ever had known all of this was going to end soon, he was _wrong_. He’d either be scrutinized or celebrated upon the impressions of his  **perseverance** and  **persistence** and through multitudes of prickling needles as his gnawing  _corrosion_ , he would etch the same  **atrocity** when he had been branded for the name he carried.  _Knifeface_. A strikingly stubborn pink line, slanting beneath his shadowy hazel eyes and slashing upward all the way to his pale brow and temple had been the permanent tattoo, despite the faded hint leaving an imperceptible crease of scar tissue, faded beyond scrutiny; a symbol for his  **coalesced desolation** , along with a _resounding fuel_ for him to be ignited with such fervor and despicableness. 

Even when he’s kissing the  **merciless earth** and  _writhing_ in such  **collision** , he’s evermore _brisk_ and  _fearless_ , as he rejuvenates within the ethereal muscle memory of fluid as he accompanies thinning sleep.  ****A **paradoxical sensation**  sweeps through his body as he had set his feet in Bucharest once again after so many years away from home - such  _discrepancy_ with elaborate facade, with crumbling interior that would reduce into a  **ruinous calamity** if shaken only a little. He was a quintessential embodiment of that very concept. Suited with vehement scales of  _chains_ , yet he had been rusting, falling apart, cranking against his memory. 

Swimming through chaos as he tries his absolute best to calm his own storm, yet they become splashing and gurgling waves over the jagged rock formation during the hurricane. Distressed muscles scalding with  **hotness** , transfigured and quite beautiful in his dazed blaze of silence. Threaded pain continuing to clench and whip around his staggering form with **tenacious grip**  as the whirling smoke, along with the candle wax of  _arterial blood_  paints over Nigel’s torso in tandem with the removal of glint of silver against the man’s nape, as the talons of his fingers dig further until he could feel the  **crushing heart**  beneath his grasp. 

His atoms may  _dance_ , the bloodlust  _satisted_ further as the magmatic fury, which had long reached its peak, subsides along with the quickly  **fading life**  of the man before him. Concurrently, as he feels a lick of moisture descend along the strong, masculine curve of his neck, a familiar  **clumps of muscles**  wind around his raised shoulder, as he continues to remain dazed beneath the tremoring ecstasy of incomparable  _warmth_ , of  **beastly slaughter** , the course of feasted midnight coming to an end. 

The mist seem to swirl  _thicker_ and  _thicker_ as glazed eyes, staring ahead slowly arches towards his reflection; yet more austere and unreadable. Still well aware of the  _aggressors_ present within the buildings, he wishes to  **savor the hunt** , lap all the fucking waves of sanguine against his form, as it calls to him. A rushing sound of dark water swells its banks; _dim_ , but  **clear**. 

“How long have you been watching?” The tumult of his muscles  _pivot_ , rather sharply, as the heap of pale limbs plummet more like a **torrential current**  as he steps out of the Red Sea, into the revealing moonlight. He appears  _interweaved_ with darkness atop of darkness, with ribs of the fallen slowly ebbing and flowing as the razor-sharp gaze lingers on his twin like  **drifting waves**. 

“The most fucking glorious moment is when someone catches a  **glimpse of my true self** in a mirror. Perhaps you  _ought_ to see so much more than what this  _fucking wretched world_ has tried to make me out to be.”


	63. Chapter 63

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A Lecter Twins drabble based on Linkin Park song titled 'Lost in the Echo.' (tl:dr; they will never be free from the 'echoes' of their minds).

He breaks away from the  **outer chamber**  of the vault of his memories, with a gasp of  _ancient air_ rushing and lashing out. He remains  _hunched_ and  _hovering_ still, as his form becomes illuminated, but barely beneath the abysmal darkness of the monochromatic, dulled atmosphere. The world may be an  _impossibly_ tall and unclaimable thing, as he continues to shamble in the dark, his form almost as if rambling in words lost to time. The  **old, rustic chimes**  of his awareness rings like a tune or rhyme, as the ambiance  _clarifies_ to call him, to push him, to cajole him, pulling his soul deeper inside. 

The  **resentment** sweetens, or rather, the taste becomes rather  _familiar_ on his tongue. He has suffered enough on his  **anguish** -  _their anguish_  - as he finds no use in screaming into voids, because everything swallows him whole. His  **weakness** had long transformed into strength, as frustrated  _desperation_ of being utterly helpless had long replaced with capable finesse of a **intimidating predator** at large. All the forged pain soldered, never ashamed of his weakness in the face of  _emotion_ ; without  **discrimination**  as the substances he makes to remember what he knows had carried him this far. 

Yet, the  **disparity of logic**  and  **desperation of love**  had claimed Nigel Lecter’s entirety. He does not know the full scope of Hannibal Lecter’s  _legacy_ , but all he could declare is that they are both legends on their own epic ways; in their own  _bizarre_ and  _unique_ minds, in their strange, wicked, cerebral and visceral ways, they are all once and forever will be  **legends**. Even with the  _bittersweet taste_ , plastic poison in a bubble as it passes through a catheter like a funnel, like a rollercoaster he won’t ride. 

There are masks and people would do anything to hide beneath the  **masquerade** of it all. Even with all the triumph she has given him, with a bleeding heart and a cut in his arm. _Standing alone and together, still undefeated_  despite being outsmarted and outdone. 

For their violence is rooted in the  **souls of the afflicter** , as their impact reaches and weaves beyond conversations. Yet, the blooming sand grains widening through a  **bloody red** blooming in the shared sky of their  _traumas_ tear and infect with further injury, as pain clamps their rugged skin. More than the  _hedonistic paradise_ , Nigel’s almost-death would serve as the further poison drenched his being, devouring him whole without all the  **swallowed lies**.  _He won’t fucking miss her, he had learned to remain blind beneath an illusion blinded by love._

And Hannibal cannot say for sure that the **distant emotions**  and the  **controlled veil**  he wears so well interrogates him beyond the shifting edges of  _everything_. Despite believing that he does not live in hurting deep of the faultline of his  **guilt** and  **remorse** , his own fury and aggrevated frustration builds and stacks like an indestructible Tower of Babel. He also cannot let any more of his pieces  _dissolve_ into nothingness when his own brand of fury becomes contained in the impossible vision of the horizon, becoming an ocean hovering above the  _well-fabricated_  and  _bulwarked_ mind palace, of his **evacuation map**. 

Such heathens they become, as their respective cages would never liberate their rudimental  _foundations_. Nor they should wake up from the idealized dreams where they walk into the only light to see through the  **impervious darkness** that is all their hindrance. 


	64. Chapter 64

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The most dangerous thing about Hannibal to others

He’s a walking nightmare of  **dead dreams** , presiding over the abandoned graveyard where no _love_ and  _dreams_ exist. Love and dreams that were so painfully close to being realized, yet **forsaken** at the end. They’re worse than a mere wistful visions during daylight fantasies; they are the ones that were  _mercilessly crushed_ before they could even begin. His own had been  **demolished** with uncountable fatalities and casualties of his own, as long-winding road of shock and petrification still claims the expanse of his psyche in a constant fight; a repeating ache in his chest and gutted throat, not knowning what to make out of it, except to beat the  **malleability**  of his human flesh. 

As much as he loves to breathe, it  **suffocates** him eventually, as he lives beneath the precipice reality as he resists until he trips and crashes, shattering alive. Then he would  **thrive** , on rations of  _promises_ and other  _fabricated lies_ and  _deceptions_ , as he lies awake with whispers in him singing its **quiet tunes**. 

All the beauty of his life could very well be the  **fray of dissonance**  of his mind, as he drowns beneath the cluttered silence. With all the **misguided wounds**  inflicted that offered barely _none_ to  _little strength_ , Mischa’s  **spectral form**  vanishes underneath the **fiery verdant orb**  of his intense maroon eyes. It’s lurid; such treasure and trechery of sanguine marring the ceasefire of his universe. 

The cacophonous thrum of the night unfolding isn’t any louder than the music produced within him as it fades into the distance. That strange chill, engulfing him and holding him together akin to a **magnetic force**  holding his somatic cells. For he had wore a mask for so long and he forgets who he is beneath all the garbage of emotions. Through the edge of the hurricane of his  _humanity_ , shock breaks through rage as he finds the most awful truth he will ever come to find. All the barren desert of his mind the only think keeping him to relentlessly going beneath the mirage of his sanity and normality. 

No one would ever know the  **seething pain** , as this tactile and extremely intelligent killer with  _absurd levels of abstract_ curiosity would never fulfill his  **obsessive hell-scapes**  of his constantly internalizing mind. Still seeking what would cure him of his neverending pain. 

Stumbling upon something that will start a  **fire** within him beneath the thinning layers of icy sleet as the flaying thread hangs suspended in the air, seeping strength and vigor and his utmost concentration along with it. It’s like walking on the **teetering edge**  between the stark awareness and bottomless oblivion as the puppeteer’s string threading into the fibers of his muscles, taking an  _absolute control_ as his own. And that is how he relentlessly and recklessly lets go of the tenacious grasp of his control; brutality of his decisive measure broaches beyond the  **stasis** of Hannibal Lecter’s conflicting  _hunger_ and  _insatiability_ against his chemeleon-like, eclectic presence. And the brief flashes of  _savagery_ beneath the absolute meticulousness, followed by the **timeless realm**  of his own theatrical darkness, paints in _true, unadulterated colors_. 


	65. Chapter 65

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What were his feelings about Hannibal’s departure to the states after their meeting in Romania?

He watches the sun burn out today from the  _peripheral_ of his gaze, as he feels as darkness took its place; slowly  **swallowing** all its light and with it all, his tenacious will to fight. The silence had gone too far and his spewing words had begun to  **explode** \- and become _meaningless_ to Hannibal. 

The sweetness that once shackled their midnight under the effervescent beauty of city lights had become one of those  **rotten retrospections**  of the things he used to love. Yet, he still cannot fathom to forget the  **paralyzation** of his  _nerves_ and  _veins_ , throbbing as his chaotic stare and troubled mind to disparate against Hannibal’s own. The developing pout of his lips may further jut, and the sharpening chisel of his complexion may tense as the strong virile of his neck swallows, the scab around his recently-inked pin-up girl undulating in tandem with expanding jugular. He does  _not_ care for Hannibal’s sentiments - for it becomes  **nonexistent** against his bleeding words. 

All the missing relative, the freedom of moments, the body broken into matter - but it’s not the sex he’s talking about, with all the  **madness** and  **lust** , as breaths echo and punch the walls. He does not  _detangle_ ; he constricts beneath what used to be the **wildest dreams** , to pursue the future together as they become the architects of each other. 

The figment of happiness, without the essence of  **genuine desire** ; without the lust in its liquid form partakes as shivering particles of his being slap any  _sentimental_ good-byes. Some may let things slide right off of the blood and bounce off the stiff flesh. People may know where to loosen the tension in their grimace. They know how to try and straighten out their quivering, squiggling mouths and bury the hatchet  _indefinitely_ \- yet all the  **milky spit**  and **cherry blood,** brittle bones caged beneath the confines of their residence won’t do any good as love turns and twists into something else. 

He wishes it’d be  **indifference** , because  _hate_ requires unrestrained and cold energy. And he doesn’t need further  _battle_ and  _war_ when all the light extinguishes and remnants of  **shattered lightbulbs**  scatter in the vaults of his mind. The passion that used to support his unsteady feet crumbles, as emptiness feels much heavier now. Without all the  **flames of life** they once fueled each other (he’d like to believe that), no wondrous thing will  _nullify_  the void in his chest. 


	66. Chapter 66

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lecter Twins headcanon based on Shinedown's Call Me 
> 
> I’ve said it so many times  
> I would change my ways  
> No, nevermind  
> God knows I’ve tried
> 
> Call me a sinner, call me a saint  
> Tell me it’s over I’ll still love you the same  
> Call me your favorite, call me the worst  
> Tell me it’s over I don’t want you to hurt  
> It’s all that I can say. So, I’ll be on my way

The _supposed life_  after  **death** is just an empty nest in this fucking tree of life that has been cut down, without the root of the problem  **excavated** and  **suppressed** down to where the sun does not reach. Perhaps in another world, they could shine as it used to in _blue, untainted skies_ , where they floated with  _colorful shapes_  amidst the clouds and birds as breaths dance between canopies. 

Now, they merely become  **gnarled, chipped serrated edges**  that will never fit together, and create numerous sparks that does not constitute exquisite euphoria nor a positive catalyst. He should already know; not to revolve his life around one person, one feeling, one place, one memory and one problem - the  **complexity** of the world and the  **diversity** of the world is beautiful and while he has all the fucking right to explore it all, he fails to remain  _subliminated_ as one concept;  **LOVE**. It defines the burning horizon of his brooding features as his sense of thought deadens, further than the gritty, desolate landscape of Bucharest crippling the clutch of pain. 

How everything washes over him like a layer of  **saltwater** , the waves of the night leaving a fiilm that holds him tight to the similarities, yet parallel line of familiarity of  _passion, wrath_ and _color_. Often in a trance, reaching out, just a glance or two, reaching out in a  **whiplash**  of a moment. Fading in and out still as his vision tinges  **crimson** , then veils in vivid black in vain. Then he’d scream into the haze, covering the  **abysmal void** and with a stutter and a sharply drawn breath, he’d be conscious again and again. 

Against all the odds, his flame had survived with a bellowing smoke. And while Hannibal and he see each other through a  **parallel universe** , through a place where respective twin’s memories store with contemplative measures with some still ceased to be touched by him in holistic mind and heart - yet somewhere, they must cross in  **perpendicularity**. And Hannibal’s touch -  _his brother’s touch_  - would mend his heart’s holes, entangle unpooled and stagnant brain tissues to mend in knotted wholesomeness. 

**Free and light and raw,**  as Hannibal’s touch would become a cascading stream of gold; how every muscle flutter beneath so disheveled and rugged expanse of his flesh.  **Loosening** , the documentation of him upheld in resiliency of his perforated and dominated layer shredding beneath the pained ooze of emotions her purges himself of the coppery taste that continues to _leach_ , despite of continuing to be left to squirm in a mire of the venom coursing through his veins.

Tilting his head ever so slightly, he stretches out his hand towards the empty purple sky as he begins his walk down the dusty road towards the horizon where the sun died. The  _expunction_ of his  **morality** , through the mountain of bloodlust slowly turning into something muddy as the taste of iron bathes him whole; to either  _shut down_  and  _dissemble_ **lightness** , never again to function or sit stuck in the mud of his quagmire mind and tremble. 

They become **silk tendrils** ,  **silver threads**  towards the torporous lassitude of his being. Flesh unfurled, lips curled, narrow hips swaying at light’s ending as hours pass as smoke  _whirls_ , flames licking sculpted copper flesh. Beyond the  **walls** of his world, beyond the  **cracked mirror**  of the vaults of his mind, what’s written in shed blood coalesces to a concealed shape, sharpening to resemble his  **counterpart** ; and what exudes from his own -  _dripping lyrics and paint and water_  - as he further drowns in the shallow puddle of his  **spilt passion**. 


	67. Chapter 67

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a remote beautiful imaginary place where life approaches perfection; for Nigel, it may be the fucking Limbo itself.

The world renders into the pencil strokes,  _clear_ and  _magnified_ , as thick graphite had stroke out across the **fibrous expanse** of the universe.  _Gloomy_ , yet as  _desperate_ as the friction of his chest, the construction of the air passing through the hollows of his body, his **fragmented memory**  and his  **reality** merge as his stride slows down, taking a long sip of his bitterstrong coffee. How everything smells like  _spring_ , as he thinks of how every moment will be one by one washed away by the end of his life. 

He will have an **immesurable sea**  of them and he thinks,  _how fucking beautiful it would be to be to die right here and now._  Become ever so fleeting and transient, as time slips by the web of his fingers like ungraspable wind in this late-afternoon, absent from the  **warmth** and **quietness**. A droning stretch of the evening stretches along with his  **superstitious smile** as both his mind and body suspends, as if he had been  **intangible** and  **groundless**. 

The sky bleeds a soft shade of  **carmine** , as it once erupted in the  _deepest crevices_ of his heart. The world moves in **slow motion** , as the crescent moon mocks of his existence as the summer breeze tangles and untangles the long locks of his hair. He’s so used to hiding and playing in the dark, even when there are stars and the light and the moon; all he can manifest is the gloom, because he’d already put out his  _own little spark_  and never again, would he let anyone put out that fire within him. 

For the  **onyx darkness**  is the brightest thing for him and despite refusing to be confined to his environment, and to be  _handcuffed_ to his past, he’s still obliged to be shackled, to be wilted down; _softly, wildly, unapologetically_. He does not deserve a fairytale, laureled with happy ending. Nigel Lecter does not walk out of a book when he is the only one who still embodies sparks and fires and skipping heartbeats or slow-motions of soul recognitions of true love. _And hadn’t he watched everything he used to have collapse with a sinkhole?_

Everything is a  **heightened fever** , a  _mere television static blur_ as he both drowns and drains the collections of memories. And he’s not quite dead nor immune to the absence of a living body and soul. And beneath this world of somber that is his own, such uproarious humanity surges, intoxicating his mind without all the thunderous menace and narcissistic composure.  

Inside, there’s a  **stillness** in his soul trapped in these invisible four walls, garnished by a lid of concrete. His mind wandering through tall glass and the verticality of _timeless pines_  and _evergreen_ , running amok in plains unkonwn like a fantasy endlessly. Perhaps then, he could find tranquility in this world of expressed entitlement and insanity, as his adamantine bones render into the  _fragile, willowy strands_  as his bloodstained lips will pierce into the rich earth, in a sweet, unfocused dream without all the  **winter-whittled ache**  inside his bones that eats him from the inside out. 


	68. Chapter 68

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Young!Nigel verse where he does not reconcile with Hannibal.

It’s so easy to forget that strength comes from  _remembering_ and  _holding_ onto everything at the same time. Capture all the moments; **the good, the bad, all the grey areas in between**. His scarred flesh slightly creases as it pinches, following the sunken cave of his almond hazel, marred with faint veil. He doesn’t like to  _linger_ , nor come to the  **sudden realization** that their bizarre, tabooed relationship would expose the sides he never would intend to be known. 

It’s not necessarily a bad thing, yet people tend to be scrutinize for his outwardly appearance that screams repressed masculinity, encased beneath the veneer of crestfallen indifference. He only manages to distract himself just enough to let his  **self-egotism**  exude through an uninterrupted state of  _hazed vertigo_. 

Drowning out the world with each drag of the smoke as people’s gaze linger onto him with much  _weariness_ , some with  **curiousness** , most often as if they had been undressing his persona, instead of him stripping of its armors of vehement coldness and impassive nonchalance.

Had he witnessed and overheard both the singularity of the experience, that would seem **astronomically unreal**  to some others. Had he in the midst of such a stickup, as he himself had struggled against the current of vagabonds such as himself, for the land had nothing to do with him, but  _pain_ and  _suffering_ and the source of negating the suffocation on his own ambition and tainted naivety. Accumulating for him to own the night as he cautiously ponders through both  **silent** and  **strident** nature of it. 

In the deepest sense of fabricated belonging, **the orbital assault of lies**  spinning round his mind in the plastic frame of of ‘ _posessive_ ’ embrace leaves Nigel more emptier than ever. Yet, the  **vicious cycle** of such memorable pattern that gets him towards cloud nine must be _addictive_ , perhaps more  **cancerous**. 

_They used to have something, didn’t they?_  He went and violated the trust that they hid and kept from one another and yet, he finds himself still wandering if their (un)linked love (that had gone astray beyond the distance that separated them) still retained its  **depth, desperation** and  **passion**. And the tremors and quakes he carries from his quasi-dream where he’s stuck beneath the **feverish rapture** and unwinding from the wicked high as breath comes only in short bursts as he struggles to grasp the vial of morphine he’s taken to keeping on the nightstand ravage through him as mind manifests into  _mud_ ,  _mud_ and _endless mud_. 

And he often wonders if Hannibal is tearing the bandages over his heart, without all the **valorious grandeur** of their childhood gone astray beneath the barbiturating air of the thick, spunky night. 


	69. Chapter 69

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kid!nigel, lecterverse headcanon.

His heart echoes inside his  **ribcages** , as the footsteps of men close distance in hollow temples of his brain. He could literally taste the  **blood stacks** on the doorsteps, spilling their secrets to the  _crumbling bones_  that will only listen. How everything  _corrodes_ and  _rusts_ , and yet, his eyes remain so focused that an erupting fire from a rifle could cry in  **violent** and  **tumultuous refusal**. 

And in that moment, Nigel’s viewfinder slants with another  **stilted frame**  as he takes in the picture of  _such dire times_. He still relents all the angry nights and sad mornings and tear-filled shouts in between. And he grimaces in  **turbulent sorrow** , despite knowing that he wasn’t **marked for death**  from the start. 

**A truth that he never wants to admit** , but he knows, not even a thousand apologies that will spill forth his lips will amend nor revert back time. He has no choice, but to take a descent, into the seamless cracks of fervent night of its lusnness. He hopes all the greens blossoming in the verdant forest with the scent of fragrant pine would separate the  **merged horizon of darkness** to open a  _veil_ , so he could see the  **glittering stars**  and to witness the sparkle in Mischa’s eyes once again. 

Yet, all he could do is to imbibe and ravenously devour what measly morsel the fucking brutes offer. Even if it hurts somehow and even if it tugs at the rips staining his supple flesh, he’d still treasure all the  **broken nights**  and  **broken hearts**  that couldn’t be filled. 

Through all the lost correspondence of his world, pale and swollen, naked in the daffodil sun smeared of grime and dirt and flecks of blood that litter his growing bones in intermittent dots and congromerated coagulation, the  **darkened path**  of his unknown future clamps around his heart as his stomach turns in knots. 

Most of the unuttered words ring and die, and what used to be the  _comforting solace_  of the room becomes smaller around him. The men’s words  _die_ and wakes half-assed buried thoughts as the air becomes ten times thicker than before. Perhaps his gyrating shadows will find a home on the wall across the room as  **every fraught** dispels beneath all the pain and aching, then healing and breaking as he embodies **every rose petal** and  **thorn** to grow whole. 

How his cherished breath feels polluted, the invaluable treasure colored with  **anguish** and **bites of death**  as so much solitude keeps him company which has owned and compelled him. His veins run black and he cannot cleanse them, for his soul  _spirals_ , saturated with uncertainty. 


	70. Chapter 70

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kid!verse.

Nigel Lecter does not remember when it didn’t hurt like this; for he couldn’t ever see or taste the sun when it dripped down his face. Yet, he still bathes in meadows of  **copper trees**  and **buried secrets**. Things that would erupt and overflow as his heart would be cracked open, _spilling_ the feelings it desperately tried to suppress.

His emotions run  **wild** and  **free** , thoughts ascending to the clouds where daydreams ensued. All he could recollect beneath the ramshackled hallways of his mismatched strands of what he could recall has been the bubbling longing of her lips on his own as his heart would  _cramp_ and _tighten_. Yet, such  **pain-riddled heart**  couldn’t sustain such memory long enough to fully resuscitate, as he would merely let the moment pass like a  **flickering lightbulb** gone dark.

His heart echoes inside his ribcages, as the footsteps of men close distance in hollow temples of his brain. He could literally taste the **blood stacks**  on the doorsteps, spilling their secrets to the  _crumbling bones_  that will only listen. How everything  _corrodes_ and  _rusts_ , and yet, his eyes remain so focused that an erupting fire from a rifle could cry in  **violent** and **tumultuous refusal**.

And in that moment, Nigel’s viewfinder slants with another stilted frame as he takes in the picture of such dire times. He still relents all the angry nights and sad mornings and tear-filled shouts in between. And he grimaces in **turbulent sorrow** , despite knowing that he wasn’t marked for death from the start.

A truth that he never wants to admit, but he knows, not even a thousand apologies that will spill forth his lips will amend nor revert back time. And all he could do is to imbibe and ravenously devour what measly morsel the fucking brutes offer. Even if it hurts somehow and even if it tugs at the rips staining his supple flesh, he’d still treasure all the **broken nights** and **broken hearts** that couldn’t be filled. 


	71. Chapter 71

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Because someone doesn't love you the way you want them to doesn't mean they don't love you with all they have."

Nigel’s life could be summed up as ‘ _these violent delights have violent ends_.’ This is the best way he’d describe it; for him, love is **violently delightful**  and  **inexonerably addictive** and he never wants to be apart from someone, despite everything ending in _catastrophic denouement_. Nevertheless, it is  _explosive_ and he’s used to feeling like he’s lit on fire; this messed up and insane mind of his continues to  _resist_ the **solitary life** which he embodied upon, because there is not much to do at night, except thinking about  _him_. 

* * *

While some places are so _indescribably beautiful_ that he cannot help but  _reminesce_ , yet the only thing that’s missing is the one Nigel always misses the most; the times when he knew right off the bat this **fucking love** wasn’t going to last. Even when he was laying in bed with Hannibal just a few inches separating himself from his twin, but in his mind, the street corner they once shared to sneak a kiss is  **off-limits** , shared residence  **forbidden** , their bedroom  **taboo**. 

And he had felt the longing, the  **painful yearning itch** for Hannibal’s familiar warmth and breath and comfort of a sleepy kiss and a whisper. In his exclusion, how he missed translating their dreams the following mornings and laughing at the sheer  _ridiculousness_ and  _disparity_ of them. He misses so much of it that just thinking about it all makes his throat swell, his already low voice to gravel like a barely perceivable breeze upon the parched, cracked earth. In contrary to what he’d like to admit, he  _knows_ this is something he’ll experience over and over again. And he thinks being with Hannibal was wildly  _stupid_ , but not in the way how outside people perceive it to be. 

It was stupid, because despite  _resisting_ the fact, he knew it wasn’t going to last. And ultimately, it was stupid, because he didn’t expect they were going to reunite in such a manner. _Until death do us fucking part_  and **Nigel’s supposed death**  fucking parted each of them in  **poignant crimson spill**. For they would have never have the right footing and jumped into it anyway, not when there are so many severed strands that  _exacerbates_ their misunderstanding and their intrinsic fortitude. _They are so **violent** and  **raw** and so  **real** , but everything remains hidden beneath their mask._

* * *

The mask has been  _lifted_ and he feels the warm bed sheets tangled in a maze of their bodies and the taste of cigarettes linger on his lips still. Beneath the tracing illumination that trace the crevice of his muscles, he simply accepts what’s being evoked. Perhaps  **instilled** and  **renewed curiosity** , without gnawing past becoming barbed wire around his brain. “And there are just some people you love for who they are, because  _changing_ them would take the uniqueness of them away. And fucking granted that I can see a future with **endless wishes** and  **concealed desires** , then no unexplainable destiny would separate us again, _never again_ , not in a fucking bloody million years.” His own words become a relief to the body, so much so that his heart drums out a steady beat in his chest. 

“I’d rather fucking take the **uniqueness of individuality**  than to be always being able to predict whatever given course of action you’re going to partake,” idle fingers tap over the sinewy muscle of Hannibal’s neck, while the curl of smoke emitting from his nostrils breaking the stillness of tranquility. An eased breath traversing through his leaned frame, against the bedframe. “What would you do, in this fucking given  _glimpse of time_?” 


	72. Chapter 72

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An unwritten (thus unsent) letter to Hannibal before Nigel's canonical (his supposed) death. Post-canon.

H. 

_Admittance_ , how it lets me creep back into my awareness. As the wall, ever so fucking carefully and deliberately constructed becomes just a **fleeting idea**. Which is all it was, an idea that I could  _cease_ to feel  **you** and all the  **associations** that has to do with you. I know very well turning my face away from it won’t ever negate the reality, for you will always be within my vision(s). And my fucking sanity and voluntary conscious tumble as the depths of my emptiness encompasses and the flame goes out of my control. 

Perhaps the mercy of our fate had already been extinguished and no  _rapture_ of understanding and love will come when I feel so  **lost** and  **ruptured**. With nobody to hold my hand and guide me back to where I belong. I am done with trying to find for  **happiness** everywhere and never realizing that it won’t be within me. Even what I considered as the light of my fucking life, the **savior** who has given me a second chance and in return, became a  **responsibility** has _abandoned_ the small flame deep inside me, which still yearns so much to  _burn_ and _conflagrate_. 

I thought of you very often in the midst of darkness as all the heartbreaks and what I’ve been through; mostly struggles and predicaments. Yet, I do not think I belong to this world, as the world has been robbed of all the melody, the enchanted beauty conceived beneath the symphony of the night as I used to thrive beneath it. 

I think often of the **unperturbed solace**  I’ve felt in our youth, wrapped up in the safety of each other and the comfort of your voice and we’re telling each other stories that doesn’t make sense to our respective worlds. Such memories become tainted,  _strange_ and  _detached_ when the truth is, that we’ll never intertwine and be safe, without the breeze weaving our hearts together as it once had. 

I  _lived_ and  _loved_ like a dream upon the logs of the fire I once bundled up against. And I’ll be gone before you know it or by the time you receive this letter.  **Farewell** , dear brother, whether happiness becomes a resident in your heart or you’d let it go as I have as you wander around the earth like a fucking vagabond. I wish you  _fortitude_ and  _luck_. 

Nigel. 


	73. Chapter 73

The heart may be nothing more than a muscle that sits inside cavities of their chests, that its only reason it is beating is not to keep them alive, but to remind them of the  **hollowed-out emptiness**  they feel whenever they wake. Its only function is to make them remember the feelings that they do not want to feel and the memories that they wish to forget. Now they’re _gone_ , it is nothing more, but an organ that keeps them barely  _functioning_. 

Not all the scattered ashes beneath the fireplace that would occasionally cause a widespread fire within their hearts;  _wild_  but  _tame_ ,  **choppers spray.**  But something that draining everything that they ever desired; to empty their hearts of all the sweet melancholy and poignant nostalgia of what used to be. And their dreams become as a  **token of the ocean**. 

How they yearn to capture every beauty mark of their shared,  **washed-out memories**  and to envelop the Lecter blood and flesh in the darkest of days.   


* * *

Nigel lives like a lawless cunt and his words are  **predatory**  and  **merciless** ; because he DESIRES to paint the world in the flickering unison of his conscious, with the delinquency beneath the cheshire smile of the crescent moon. He KNOWS of the heeled boots and scattered ashes telling his story to the wind, beneath the windows that mimic his frantic breaths.

He PRETENDS to escape from hell through his _fogged up_  consciousness through sex. His soul  **bound to hell** and mind escaping through his naked body, sleeping beneath the rippling world. His mind would race along the stretch of the gurgling gutter, beneath the frolic dance of the clown as IT makes a sharp turn. Through the chain-linked fence, down the  **slum district** of his mind where his poor heart still  _shocks_  by the  **sudden**   **exertion**. With no  _mercy_ , no _composure_ , no glimpse of ESCAPE.

* * *

Hannibal becomes a kind of person who becomes more than the  **world** , more than the  **universe** , and yet he knows, that he could only become and offer the world a single star from the  _broken_   _constellation_  of his mind. Things would come and go in his world and he had become nothing but himself, in order to accept that through his many endeavors and loves, he’d never fear or given much thought to his impact on the lives of others. Because he is the  **warm open sea**  and others would drown themselves unwittingly in the warm water’s embrace beneath the rarest form of transparency, a  **crystalline diamond** of his honed, clear and perfected mind that would deceive, without a clear deception. 

With the capabilities of constructing  **atomic proportions** in his mind as he becomes an architect, Mischa would forever make him to bleed an ocean of his sanity, maxims of his uncharacteristic  **obsequiousness**. Her presence and virtue had crawled in such a slow manner, but they lingered as they seeped into his soul.  

* * *

_Unbreakable and stubborn, even with the test of time,_ _more than a penchant for repeating through his damned life, with_ _the dichotomy of everything._ _They will remember their captors’ vile words, touch, tainted dreams, putrescent hopes and sighs as_ _their place upon the world threaten to pulverize as they pass each other, fleetingly._

Their bodies are in  _drought_  and the devil inside them wants it to sprout further, to  **pour** themselves out until his entirety overruns by wolves in their mind; turning into oceans of RED with the blood that would spill from their lips and hearts. Their heartbeats would quicken under their **ruby lips** and  **fluttering eyelashes**. The  _sinister, velvety laughter_ and their  _diabolical_ _beat_  still would echo in their cranium. And the bloodlust would swim through their veins and become intoxicated by breathing the ocean spray of the maestro of symphony of blood and bodies at their feet. Another after another, piling up the pit of their ravenousness. 


	74. Chapter 74

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kid!Nigel verse, Hannibal's POV at the orphanage.

An eye cracked open, as light streamed in all the wrong directions; _talking, murmuring, indistinct_. Everything becomes too much to bother with, as sleep reached out with fuzzy fingers, yet failed to claim him once again. Apathy wallowed in its  **depths** for what it seems like  _eons_ , as he dreamed a little, tossed a little, woke in cold sweat a few times, vomited a few more times after that, scurrying towards the bathroom. 

His thoughts were still muddled and easily scattered.  _Was he dying? Was this relentless sea of **nausea** and  **incapacity** to process how it felt to die, how it felt to break away from the  **corporeal**? _

He still has a lot to learn from this life, yet all Hannibal Lecter can feel is an  **intangible silence**. He does not expect an answer, yet  _how does he express that he’d been learning since the day he was born?_  He had been **too young** , when he learned that the love he thought was only his, yet it could be very well divided and had to be shared. And his own life  **reshaped** and  **crippled** him concurrently, as all the  **passions** and  **expectations** had been scraped off his back with the cruelest sense of irony; as he suffers from the absence of a person who is present still, with his back pressed against the side of his thigh. 

Still tasting the bile threatening to push against the back of his throat, he suppresses a tidal wave of shivers down his spine as he finds himself laying over the mold of his form behind Nigel. How his lips graze the back of his twin’s neck; and despite him not being able to express as his sharp, conflicted gaze may  _withdraw_ and become further  _distanced_ beneath confoundingly numerous thoughts flashing before him, Hannibal knows, Nigel becomes his  **most cherished treasure**. And being loved by him is the most **sublime privilege**  when he cannot take ownership of nothing, not even his own swallowing darkness. 

He does not burn behind the smolder of Nigel’s warmth; he  **consumes** , like a piece of paper caught alight, as it resonates its way through him until he was nothing, but flecks of ash, blown away in the sudden wind to explore all the tangibility that isn’t  _oppression_ and  _repression_. And the lost voice beneath the echoing chamber drumming against Nigel’s back articulates his own desires as he wraps his arm around the safety of Nigel’s chest as he recalls memories that feel  **remarkably strange**  to be detached from their tragedies. 

Because the  **truth** is that they’ll never be those kids again and they’re both running and he hasn’t done anything, except lying together; intertwined, safe, as the gentle breeze seeping through the cracked window weaving their hearts together. 


	75. Chapter 75

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hannibal's headcanon.

It’s more difficult to see through someone’s  **truth** than through a  _façade_ ; for **false compassion**  has no heart energy. Genuine compassion is palpable, for it sparks from a person’s chest, arms and hands to his. The sparks though say nothing of his  **intention** , and Hannibal may feel an ally in someone who  _ultimately averts_ his gaze when he needs one. He may feel a life that’s repeatedly stuffed in the vault of his memory. He may feel  **authenticity** surge from the well of a person who’s about to lie to avoid loss. 

The raw face of truth can be so much more confusing than a painted mask. A  **masquerade** full of heart wishes that have no space or courage for  _expression_ and filled with words that may not find a voice. Yet, Hannibal Lecter finds his voice, a candle lit from the depth of the abyss, soaring through the  **unbreachable thickness** of the onyx night. His world may have been plagued, yet his purpose iis a source of entertainment and a cure for  **boredom** and  **mundanity**. 

As he had been born during a deadly earthquake, and he hubs hell in the  **most ceremonious fashion**  as he wills the earth to rumble. Cities and outskirts to be swallowed hole beneath the rapture of his theatricality.  ****He had coped with unpleasantries of every strand of his memories weaved into the _subconscious_ , but all the suspended dusts -  _nonadmitted flaws and all the garbage_  - illuminates down to every hidden corner of his soul to be explored yet again. 

_Does he still lay awake at night, recalling the Polaroids of the unfurled stars, how his cheeks were drenched in frustrated and misery at the ridiculous possibilities of him and her?_  Mischa, his stone-rose. He still has the wistful spirit of a child that listens wide-eyed to the marvelous tales told over and over during long winter evenings they once shared with the spine of the book contouring over his hand with gentle pink glow of his maroon basking over her. 

He allows himself to be  **vulnerable** just this once and envelops himself in the memory of what has passed. A memory he know is a most vivid one shared between him and her. 

And he wonders he would ever be able to forget all the  **unrealized thousands of possibilities**  as his world exploded with those scattered puzzle pieces. Alone and separate, to be fit together when he had been away from it all. Another thing he wonders is through the _staccato_ of movement as blotches of crimson unfurl away from the  _boundary_ of his own flesh, each layer would remove and bring a **new vulnerability** until he was bare in all ways that he had never expected. 

He had no desire to seek outside help and the word  **therapy** brought lumps in his throat; through his recurrent feel of  **emptiness** and  **melancholy** , he would maintain his concreteness though he might crack, mend himself in earnest. Despite him trying to build a paradise hidden, waiting at the end for his own patients, the world has forgotten to build a paradise for him. For he’d lost an imperfect world and gained some  _scars_ and some  _nightmares_ and a  _goddamn conscience_  that’s beyond the oeuvre and modus operandi of most notorious serial killer. Even when he might get trampled on with bouts of **surging emotions**. For the most of times, he’s compacted in sinews and blood, bone and marrow as he lets his work define himself. 

He’d be the destroyer as the skies would crack open and unleash a **torrent of crimson** , drenching him and the world beneath him. He must have been cold with the water seeping into his shoes, wet clothes heavily clinging to his skin. How  _unreal_ the drops are, what used to be the chimera of his mindscape as he witnesses the **suppleness of skin** evaporating beneath his sinewy clutch. All that is left is the **jingle jangle** of bones collapsing into each other. And how his soul emboldens further to shout over his own **carnal destruction**. And  _nothing_ empowers him more than the life dangled by a thread, the glint of his scalpel severing a fragile thread that is meant to be cut and never reconstructed or repaired again. 


	76. Chapter 76

Things Nigel didn’t tell her (in his rationality versus. impulsive emotions).

  * I love you, I’m in love with you. Even when I’m fighting the fucking  **comatose** and being robbed that sacred portion of my life, that I had all too _willingly trusted_  and  _assumed_ **permanent** , or at least long-term.  

  * I didn’t answer your phone call, because you left me  _speechless_. I couldn’t find the fucking words to describe how I’ve felt then. Maybe I was afraid you wouldn’t stay. I wasn’t about to find out and have my **fucking heart** ripped out of my chest. 
  * How I want to sink my canines into Charlie in a fit of instinctual wrath; as such an opportunity presented itself. How a prominent vein left of my jugular would swell, as I began acutely interested in the image I projected; how my teeth twinge and ache in **anticipation** , how my head spins with longing without ever meaning to.  **Maiming** him until he’s fucking  _mangled_ beyond recognition. That’s what I should’ve fucking done. 
  * I wish things were simpler. Wish I could trade all this fucking pain for a continuing life of peace. I’m sure by now I don’t have too much left. For I cannot fucking imagine what the  **stress** and  **burden** and  **heartbreak** and the concern for my shattered universe has done to my body and mind. _What’s there to take?_ Still I float downstream and the current sweeps me away as it always has. 
  * How is that an evening of joy and freedoms remembered can snowball all too quickly into a nightmare? I know all things in this life are vulnerable, but not quite like where it fades so rapidly as pain is felt in all its harsh reality. 
  * How I fucking wish all of this was just the last moment of dreaming before the eyes fly open and the  **calm night** floods in. I don’t care if I have to repeat the whole endeavor once again - _I’m suffering. I’ve been suffering for so long_  - but I’ve also been living in **wonder** at the same time. 
  * You’re on my mind. You’re always on my  _fucking mind_  and ~~I sometimes hate you for that.~~
  * I wanted to put  **your**   **happiness** first, but I was so selfish and had yet to learn that love involves sacrifice. Yet,  _haven’t I done everything to give up my sanity and sustenance?_
  * You were my  **everything** and I’m still waiting for the very day when you _won’t be_ anymore. 




	77. Chapter 77

> _ Whoever said it was better to love and to lost has obviously never loved anyone.  _

Beneath the chimera of his daydream and nightmare, his legs remain wrapped around her like vines along the length of a tree trunk; seeking out the sun, as hardened skin and fingers like roots sink themselves into her skin. As if they were seeking out a  **home** inside her as she may have in him - longing for more warmth and growth, more room to explore,  _needing_ ,  _seeking_ , _craving_ more -  **beautiful** and  **damned**. 

_ (it may be wrong to chase false love, but it is just wrong to refuse to pursue true love when he’s still carrying around pieces of darkness, because he refuses to let himself go, as he lets this abyss swallow him whole) _

Despite the writhing nerves and contracted muscles that retract every ounce of his blood to his stirring furnace of forged core, he’s at his  **absolute clearance** ; with the  **clarity** of thoughts, where emotions and feelings spill over with candor honesty. Diminishing with his own  _selfishness_ as he becomes one with himself. With no smoke of obscurity nor doubts, nor uncertainty and impulse. The length of his memories skew and stretch, suffocate beneath the **bowstring of his heart** ; _worn and ready to snap_. With his eyes like rain, rising and falling with the wind as his gaze remains ever searching and grasping. 

Once crackling and bright mouth only exhales such  **dying beauty** ;  _beautiful and full of scars_. He may appear all-aglow-in-golden hues with a sunset sitting in his chest, every tingle, every vein, humid softness wrapping him up and in never manifests into resurgent life from **inexonerable death**. With his mind opened up in chasm, in  _strife_ as every nerve impulse flows into his breath.

_Wisps of fire without all the summer sweetness of life._

Now, the bitter chill creeps within his bones as the intensity grows even more despair as the time halts. He’s all wrapped up in the catapulted hurricane of the churning swirl of the hydraulic dam, as the breeze threatens to sweep him off his feet into the very abyss he hasn’t quite returned from. As if he’s stepped into **another dimension** ; none of the things outside the space which they occupy  _matters_ , or he’s in too much of an  **obscured haze**  to conceptualize it within his fragmented synapses.

He’s evermore  _grateful_ for himself for having the patience to peel back the sadness to find his full open heart, still full of deep light; steady and calm, despite having been blasted with the **dividing line** between fairy tales and reality. In his mind, the two run together, even though the interactions aren’t always obvious. Perhaps Nigel would be the prisoner of an **untold, unrealized story**  that further bruises, but never cuts him in pieces. 

Which proves he is still worthy of love and being loved in return, be reciprocated properly.  


	78. Chapter 78

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Midnight Stain || Nigel x Gabi

Gabi rectified her posture rising out of the  **night’s entrancing sleep**  with a  _single purpose_ in mind. As all the trees rustled and swayed and creaky windows opened with each whistle of breath of wind caressing her arm and tracing over her exposed shoulders, her attention focused on the  **exuding heat** resonating from her behind. Nigel’s sleeping form, still encased in yesterday’s clothes. His suit jacket flung off to the foot of the bed with his billfold wallet and keys and rumpled pack of cigarette, with a loose tie tracing the curve of his chest as it imperceptively ebbs and flows with his heated breaths. 

Her eyes fill with such promise, perhaps sympathy; even perfunctory duty as slipping off the reminder of his  **elusive profession**  had escaped Nigel’s mind when he sleeps like dead with exhaustion embedded around the caved-in eyes. Perhaps it is a sin to pursue whatever she feels, which had lain beyond the ocean’s distant horizon with Nigel’s absence, but Gabi’s more of the balanced one and her insight is crystal clear. Life’s too complicated for **simple dichotomies** and she isn’t the one to shy away from fulfilling her needs, fulfilling  _his_ needs.

Thus she moves like a  **feline** , in silence in response of the peaceful day approaching. There are no words to combat  _absurdity_ when she realizes carnal want is as the truer sin as it gets when it comes to her  **freedom**. This is her break towards it and it is her  **private hell and heaven**  that completely encompasses her. 

_Does a tree bloom because it stayed inside its seed?_   That is all the encouragement she needs, as she breaches through a jewel-like radiance of the sun above with inimitable iridescence shimmering in her mellow, honeyed eyes. After all, it’s Nigel who **opened the fire**  swelling in her so  _rapturously_ as their worlds dimmed into the early twilight and the destination of today was _delayed_ in the exquisite moment in time. With their hearts pounding in their ears and a feeling like jumping off a cliff in their chests. She has stood before him, but not like this when she finds a **wordless trance** she found herself in. Their life isn’t a **frivolous dream** , yet the shared passions affect them all the same with sincere laughter and an inspiring meeting of minds. 

She reaches towards Nigel’s belt buckle and nestles beside his side with a gentle shove against his abdomen. The velvety petals of her lips saturate with the words she fails to speak, but she knows, the gesture is  **more than enough**. She may resemble a posture of a humbled server begging for his reaction, but there always is a **greater purpose**  in every aspect of this sudden faithfulness. Such  _perfidy_ of her mind and body matters less when she’s the one  _surrendering_ to Nigel’s heat in all of her zeal. 

He isn’t all sinewy, chiseled pipe dream with his eyes and scars. He’s a man who’d seen the dark that she’d seen and like her,  _treaded endlessly_  through the seas of doom.  **They’re ruinous together.**  While Nigel makes no visible sound as his left shoulder blade sinks further into the mattress, Gabi’s already onto his hardness, that has built up on him like a temperature gauge going into red. She could almost feel the blood gather as the faint scent of his cologne and subtle hint of cigarette thickens. 

And everything falls into place with Nigel’s widening eyes as more clothes come undone, and he’s already the closest thing to  **freedom** , the surest path to heaven he doesn’t deserve to be in. If there was any chance at prolonging this  **young bliss**  and concurrent  **plunging** into the bottom of the ocean he’d feel with her, he would draw his sharpest blade and the most aggressively and profanely blunt honesty and fight through the earth, wind and fire to embrace this particular moment. How it restores his heart to its former  **loveliness** as his heart elevates as blood speeds through the last stretch of darkness towards his hardness. 

It was this thrill she birthed in him that was so terrifying. Not just in this moment, but also the first time she entertained his wild drivel. Reciting her name like a fucking chant, while his baritone intonation sunk further and further as he gasped and moaned. When Gabi presents herself like a dream and an angel without wings, his earnest laughter sounds like a  **fucking miracle**. And soon, the images of the **wild dream**  that had dizzied his mind  _unfurls_ , as the rose-stilled air between them  _explodes_. As she sings those words she was destined to speak, the song that had swam through his mind urges with wanton need. He smiles at her and simmers in her bare grace as the last glimpse of the night closed in around them to coalesce them in unity. 

The hand that she reached out to him faded away in both swirling grace and rough pinning and he drowns in her natural beauty, which never ebbs away from the intensity of his gaze. And the eyes that sparkled like diamonds are the  **last trace of life** he finds before he freefalls down into the bottomless ocean of her ichorous softness that swallowed him. 

He feels  _no anger_ , _no distress_ , he simply realizes the truth - as both of their stomachs clench as he feels her legs shake, given enough time there would be burning to pressure where her softness and his hardness meet - **she is everything to him**. His falling hair dips further into the ripping waters of the contracting muscles of her shoulder. Despite the expanse of pain, Gabi’s lungs burn with pressure, breathing Nigel in as love between them worked something like this; their conversations replayed in their mind as perceptions  _distort_ and runs  _too fast_. As furious shade of red dominates them whole, Nigel bites his lips, as his bare shoulders and glutes become tense as white hotness eminating the **summer’s soporific**  in the most charming way as all his feelings come crawling out and hold vigil in this break of dawn. 

As he breathes in the salt brine of their mingled scents, his  **blistering passion**  turns sensible with his emotions in a way he had never been with the others. More exhaustion creeps in the crevices of his spine, his ribcages and his fingertips; yet the sensation itself teaches him how to  **breathe** , with every breath he takes in is heaved out, which in  _essentiality_ , taught him how to walk when he felt more or less like a fish out of water, with near-fatal scar and the scraps along the way with worst of his **battered bruises** and the feeling of  **helplessness**. How he treads in the middle of the ocean,  _exhausted_ , barely keeping his head above water - yet he does not have to miss sleeping next to her as his world remains lit by a  **bare swinging light** of her alabaster flesh. 


End file.
